This year I signed up to volunteer at Logan’s science lab.  There are multiple volunteers, so I only have to help every other month.  My first one was last Wednesday.  I was happy to walk the boys to school in the morning, then I headed over to the science classroom.  This volunteering job was easy, I just hung to listen to the teacher, then help distributed materials or assist the kids if needed.  During the class, it was fun to watch the kids make a human close loop and later worked in small groups. I learned some electricity basics as well. 

    After our two hours of tennis on Saturday morning, we came home to have lunch and to clean up quickly.  Rohan had invited the boys to go play at his house, so we dropped them off before we headed to Ikea.  Our goals were to look for a bookshelf for Logan and search for closet solutions for the boys’ room and Stuart’s office.  Stuart and I were excited to take our time to shop this time without the boys.  We spent time looking everywhere in the showroom and got many cool ideas.  We started thinking about furniture for part of the game room, either a couch or a table.  The boys are growing taller and our small Ikea kid table is getting too small for Logan.  We finally decided on getting a table and some chairs.  We also found a good bookshelf for Logan, some blankets and a bench shoe rack.  But unfortunately we knew we could only fit a few things in the car, so we had to skip the bookshelf and the shoe rack this time.  We also had to drive all the way home to drop off the boxes before returning to pick the boys up.  When we arrived at their house, we sat and talked with Vrinda for awhile before going home. 

    Despite being tired out all day, Stuart decided to start putting the table together since the boys were out playing “Kick the can” anyway.  The boys were very happy with the idea of a new and bigger table, especially Logan.  This morning, Logan was thrilled to use his Chromebook on the table.  So I decided to join him for some reading, then Stuart brought his laptop to watch a soccer game.  Connor wanted to join the family table too and tried to play his XBox game in a distance.  In the afternoon we played a board game and it was refreshing to spend some time in a part of the house where we are not usually together.

     On Tuesday, Logan had upper braces placed.  The appointment was over an hour, and Logan seemed to be quite calm with it.  When they arrived at the office, he told Stuart to come back to pick him up after the procedure.  In the evening Logan complained just a couple of time being in discomfort or pain.  Overall Logan has dealt with all these a lot better than we expected.  Today he said a few of his friends noticed them and they just talked about the color of the brackets.  He did not complain of anything else.

Before and After:

    Shortly after school started, Connor discovered that he loves helping the teacher.  Every day he tries to help the teacher 5 to 10 minutes after school and before he heads over to the after-school program.  When we were off during Fall Break, Connor actually made a comment that he missed helping the teacher.  We suggested that he could help us too.  He helped Grandma setting up table when we were down south.  He washed the cars with Stuart and he was in charge of the cart when we went shopping.  Actually Connor is always a good helper.

    We left the house early on Friday morning with the aim of being at the Studio an hour before the actual park opening; this was the benefit of purchasing the tickets online, they allowed early entry.  As soon as we entered the park which was quite crowded already, we headed over to the Harry Potter land.  The entire area was very nice and the Hogwarts castle was beautiful.  We immediately got in line for the Forbidden Journey.  It took us possibly 20-30 minutes in the line, but there were lots of nice decoration inside the castle to look at.  When it was near our turns to be seated, Connor told us that he did not want to get on the ride, but of course it was too late to back out then.  All four of us hopped on a four seaters, and were strapped in.  Connor was still quietly whining and started sobbing.  Since we were trapped, nothing we could do and the ride began.  The ride was actually very cool; we really felt like we were flying through the castle and later outside following Harry during a Quidditch game.  Giant spider and the Dementors were coming at us.  I am very sensitive to motion, so I was slightly distracted to make sure I did not get sick.  Right before the end of the ride, the motion  and visual effect were turned off assuming the ride was stopped as someone took longer to get off.  Despite the abrupt stop and motion sickness, the ride was still fun for me.  When we got out, Logan said he was a little scared, Connor was happy that he made it through, and Stuart also thought that it was a cool ride.  Next we went to shop for wands as the boys were wishing for them.  It was interesting going through the different wands and the boys decided on the ones they wanted.  We bought the interactive ones and we learned how to cast the spells at many display windows.

    Once we left the Harry Potter land to explore other parts of the park, we came across the Special Effects Show, so we waited in line for it.  The show was very interesting and the hosts were funny.  When they talked about the monster scary effects, Connor got scared and wanted to leave.  We had to shield him away from the remaining scary part, then he was ok again. Overall we liked it.  After lunch, we went for the Studio Tour.  There was a couple of older things from what I remembered close to 20 years ago, but many new additions, like the dinosaurs and the car chase, were cool.  Afterward, Stuart convinced Logan to go to the Transformers ride.  Connor declined going on rides again, and I was happy to avoid motion sensitive rides as well, so Connor and I just walked around and watched people plummet into the water at the Jurassic Park ride.  There was an animated Raptor coming out periodically to let people take pictures; I was hoping to get a picture with it as we were just hanging out.  But Connor was too afraid to get near and declined.  Don’t know why Connor suddenly becoming so afraid of everything.  Then Logan and Stuart were done; they thought that ride was ok, but Logan did not feel as scared, so he rated that better than Harry Potter one. 

   Next we caught the Animal Actor show which was relaxing to sit down for awhile.  Then we wanted to return to Harry Potter land and tried the Ollivander (the wand selection experience).  After lining up for a bit, we were grouped into a small group (20+) to gather into the small wand shop.  The wand maker looked around; he asked Logan for his name and if he was interested to buy a wand, and he said yes.  So he asked Logan to come forward.  He had picked up a couple of wands to have Logan try and tell him where to aim and to repeat the magic words; Logan did exactly what he was told, then the light went out and the flowers died.  Next the wand maker found a special wand and as soon as he handed it to Logan, Logan felt air blowing at him and he glowed as well.  This was exactly like the scene in Harry Potter and the special effects were cool.  Too bad that I could not capture the experience on video.

   When we walked the final round across the park, we spotted the Despicable Me ride and Logan was interested, so Stuart and Logan went in.  Connor and I then were in a hunt for ice cream until we found Dipping Dots. Their ride took longer than we initially expected, but they both liked it and Logan rated that the best out of the 3.  By then we were done and ready to leave the park.  We walked around the Universal City and the boys chose pizza for dinner before we headed back to grandparents’ house.

    On Wednesday we drove down to visit the grandparents, and the drive was smooth.  Other than the one day at Universal Studio, we tried to have the kids spend some quality time with them.  Even though the kids had not seen the grandparents in a while they were excited to be with them and were quite huggy.  Connor also wanted to follow Grandma wherever she went on the first day.  During the next couple of days, the boys played chess and Domino with grandparents, and we also brought some of our board games and we taught them to play with us.  The boys played hide and seek, and other games with Grandma in the backyard.  We also spent a couple of hours at Manhattan Beach.  The weather was beautiful and sunny.  Connor initially did not want to get his feet sandy, but later he had fun playing football with us.  We had a nice packed lunch by grandma there as well.  It was a fun outing.  We also spent a little time at the mall to walk around after dinner.

    At the end we had to decide to drive back on Saturday afternoon so we could have Sunday to catch up on chores.  The drive back was smooth and quick, but we were definitely very tired when we returned home after 10pm.  The next morning we all slept in a record time.  Connor was the first to wake up at 7:50 and he came to see us, then Logan woke up at 8:15am.  I fell back to sleep and Stuart and I actually stayed in bed until past 9am which was the first for years.