Connor’s teacher chose to have the class party on Friday and I took off the afternoon to help out.  When I arrived at the classroom, Connor came and gave me a hug.  The room parents set up a few stations, ie. for hot cocoa, decorating cookies, and art and crafts tables.  I was assigned to help the kids making ornaments and I was happy with this task.  We helped 5 or 6 kids at a time to decorate the ornaments, and all the kids did a great job.  After all the stations, the kids could also get a balloon sword from one of the parents making them.  By the end of the day, the teacher also put on a video for the kids to watch and that wrapped up the holiday party.

    As a treat, I also loved taking the boys to martial arts on Friday after school.

    The boys have many hang out these days.  They were asked to go play at Maxim’s last Sunday, so that gave Stuart and I 3 hours to do things.  We played almost 2 hours of tennis, and as much as I tried, I could only get 4:6 and 4:6 against Stuart.  And we were definitely exhausted afterward.  The boys often hang with Cole or with other neighbors here or at his house periodically throughout the weekends.  Last night Rohan also came over for a few hours as the parents had a last minute party to attend.  These days we only have family game time only sometimes on weeknights.  Stuart and I ended up playing Scrabble on our own while the boys were with Rohan. It was fun.

   Last Saturday the boys were very excited that Stuart and I were going to the party as they were going to Rohan’s for the evening.  We dropped them off by 6pm, and headed over to San Jose State University Student Union ballroom.  This year the party was just the medicine department I work with, so I know most of the employees and they all came with their significant others.  We had drinks and appetizers, and later a buffer dinner.  The food was actually quite yummy and there were plenty of them.  While we ate, one of the medical assistants along with her dance group performed for us, and it was very entertaining.  Next the organizers did the drawing and gave out some raffle prizes.  Finally the dancing began; the DJ did a good job with the music and there were many people enjoying themselves out on the dance floor.  Stuart and I danced for a bit as well before we left the party by 10pm.  This was the last of the work holiday parties i had this year.  When we arrived at the Gopals, the boys were having a good time with Rohan as well.  Even after the many hours playing together, they were not quite ready to go home when it was finally time.

     It was a long day last Thursday.  Dora and I had to wake up very early to drop her off at the airport, and I ended up heading to work.  This was also a day with two work parties, so I could not even try to go home early.  At lunch time, I joined the nephrology department at Buca for the two hour holiday lunch.  A pharmacist and I went together, and we had a good lunch with everyone who had already arrived.  I did not prepare with a white elephant gift as this was a last minute RSVP for me, but one of the girls there brought an extra gift so I could play too.  We had a fun game and the ladies there had a blast stealing gifts.

    After work, I headed over to Hayes Mansion for the pharmacy party.  Our group had grown and it was a big turnout.  We had drinks and afterward enjoyed a nice sit-down meal.  Then we played a new way of gift exchange and it was fun.  Our boss was nice putting together this holiday party for us.  I left home just early enough to say goodnight to the boys.  They had a good night as well as they had the usual pizza and TV combo while mommy was out.

     Even though it is December, we really do not feel the Christmas spirit yet.  Last weekend we finally put out the Christmas lights outside the house, but we are still holding off decorating inside the house.  It was good that we had made plan to watch Ashlee’s performance at the park on Sunday so we could start soaking in some spirit.  The boys were interested to watch her dance but more importantly they were happy that Rohan would be there too.  It was a beautiful sunny day and we arrived at the park early.  We walked around to check out the decoration and bought some snack for the boys before the show started.  The half hour show went well and Ashlee’s group performed three dances.  The boys enjoyed watching the dances, but Connor had hard time recognizing Ashlee and needed Opi to take him to the front to point her out.  Connor was also surprised that she was wearing lipstick.  Afterward, our three families headed over a bakery for an afternoon tea.  The wait was very long, but it gave the kids more time to play with each other. 

     Dora arrived here on Thursday night a week ago.  She stayed with us for a couple of days before leaving to Sacramento.  I had taken most of Friday off to spend time with her.  The boys also enjoyed having Dora walking them to school in the morning and had her watched them during martial art.  More importantly Connor knows that Dora likes boba drinks and he was especially happy to take her to T4U after martial arts.  We ordered different snacks and drinks to share with her, and Connor also made plan to come back with her on Tuesday after the next martial arts lesson.

    Over the weekend, Dora left us to drive up to Sacramento to meet with Amy to run a full marathon.  On the day of the race, we were tracking her and was happy to see her progress.  But the tracking was behind and as we heard that she passed the 20th mile, I received this picture of them from her at the finish line in front of the capital building.  Dora not only hung in there the entire race with the pain in her legs, she finished very well and qualified for Boston too.  We were all very proud of her.

     Dora drove back to us on Monday and we spent the next few days with her. I had taken Wednesday off from work as well.  After volunteering at the Science Lab on Wed morning, we drove up to SF.  We ran a little errand for me, then we headed to North Beach for lunch.  It had been years since we had been to this restaurant; we both were satisfied and stuffed afterward.  We then went to Japantown to walk around.  We also purchased grocery to make hotpot for dinner to fill Connor’s request.  The boys had enjoyed auntie’s visit and had to say goodbye to her on Wednesday night as I took Dora to the airport early Thursday morning.