Michelle talked about hiking which got us inspired for a hike of our own, so we took the boys for a short one in our usual local place this morning.  Connor was excited to be an explorer; he prepared himself with a backpack for snack and binoculars.  Today we tried to get some exercise but we did not really get much of that at the beginning.  The boys were dilly dallying and I also tried to take some pictures, so we stopped often.  We finally made it to our usual playground for a longer stop.  After the boys played a little at the structure, we had a picnic lunch with the sandwiches I prepared.  After lunch, we decided to hike back the short route but then explored an uphill trail that we never tried.  Logan tried to run up the hill but got tired half way through; however he kept trying and with the help of Stuart, he made it up the short hill relatively quickly.  Connor and I steadily walked up together while we sang and we made it.  We all finally got the workout that we were hoping for.  We then walked down the hill and strolled back to our car; Connor continued on with some singing all the way back.  It was a nice outing on a beautiful day.

    When we shopped at Michael’s last week, I picked up a box of Perler beads and it was one of the best $8 toys we have purchased.  I started the project with Logan a few days ago; it took both of us a little bit of time to get the hang of it.  I gave Logan some guidance while he built his first knight, but it was a bit stressful as I did not do a good job ironing it and he had to end up re-building half of it.  We finally got his first knight, a shield and a base completed together, and he loved it.  Since then, he has been making a knight each day and he is totally on his own building the entire set.  He follows the instruction to make the correct shapes but he improvises a little bit with the colors and designs.  He gave the knights cool boots and nice swords, and he also made up a crossbow all on his own.  Logan is so excited about them that he had cleaned out an area on his nightstand to prepare for his troop. 

     For the first few days, Connor did not pay much attention to what we were doing except looking at Logan’s final result.  But last night he asked to make one, so Logan and I got him started on making a dinosaur (or a dragon as the set calls it).  Connor understood that he could not finish it last night, so he told us that he would work on it first thing this morning.  And Connor remembered!  He asked for it as soon as he got up this morning, but I convinced him to wait until after breakfast.  Connor asked for help a lot while he was building, but after just verbal encouragement, he finished building the dinosaur all on his own.  He did a good job making up the color combination.  I guided him to build the base, then Connor was very proud to show off his first dinosaur to Logan and Stuart.  Before bedtime tonight, Connor started his next project which is building a knight while Logan makes his first dinosaur.

    The Merons invited many of their friends over for brunch today and we arrived shortly after 10:30am.  As we settled in, the food was being cooked and served.  The kids started playing together while the adults indulged with food and enjoyed some drinks.  It was a hot day, so we were prepared with water clothes for the kids to play with the sprinklers.  At first our boys were not interested, but with Stuart’s encouragement, they changed their mind and joined the crowd.  Both Logan and Connor attempted to play with the slip and slide; Connor was more slipping then sliding, but they both had fun.   Later Nanda arrived with the bouncy house, and all the kids immediately started playing with it after it was set up.  They played with water guns and the bouncy house slide; the kids had a blast and they were all wet.  After a few hours in the sun, the kids started migrating inside the house.  A few kids including Logan were glued to the TV while Connor and others made some drawings.  Connor made a nice drawing of tanks and planes.  Before we realized it, we were at their house for over 6 hours, so we packed up and the boys fell asleep quickly on the way home.  We just picked up some quick dinner to go but I was still quite stuffed for all the food we ate today.  We were all exhausted from a day of relaxing and playing.

    Since Stuart introduced Logan to a PC tank game, Logan has been fascinated with tanks.  He includes them in every time he draws.  He builds tanks with any kind of building blocks; tonight he built them with Legos.  He asked Stuart to help him in making a tank out of cardboards and was very proud of it.  He looked for programs on TV with the word “tank” (but sadly only found Thomas).  With Logan’s influence, even Connor is drawing tanks too.

     We had spent most of the times indoor the past few days, partly due to the hot weather.  While Logan and I were off on Thursday and Friday, the only outdoorsy thing we did was play tennis one early morning.  Then I took Logan with me to the coffee shop for an hour both days to study.  Logan did his workbooks while I did some reading.  Logan did well there, and he even wrote a story about what we did at Disneyland.  But of course, he enjoyed a special treat, a cookie, there as well.  In the afternoons, we played games in the house.  Logan lately wants to play big kid games, and he pulled out another game Stuart and I used to play, Battle Line.  This was definitely a big kid game but I tried my best to teach him.  I was impressed how Logan managed to understand the gist of it.  We played several other games including a quick game of table tennis before picking Connor up at the end of the day.

    On Saturday, we went to Logan’s soccer game in the morning and it was hot.  Beside that and some shopping at a couple of stores, we spent the rest of the day in the house.  Today while I spent few hours helping out at the Senior Health Fair at work, Stuart and the boys stayed in the house again.  Both Logan and Connor were very content and happy to look for different things to play.  They found some Legos that were given to them from birthdays and had fun building them.  Both of them required assistance, but both are doing better with Legos now.  Stuart and the boys played with castles and soldiers, a cube/marble game and did more drawings.  After dinner we did finally take a walk outside while the weather was cooler.  The boys enjoyed playing with the new water guns given by the grandparents.

    We certainly felt too lazy to do much the past few days but we definitely enjoyed staying at home too.  It’s worth mentioning that we have been in this house for exactly one year now and we still love our house.