It had been a long time since Connor lost the first two teeth, and finally there was another wiggly one.  This tooth was bothering him making it difficult to eat for few weeks.  It eventually became very loose a couple of nights ago.  After Connor went into bed, he came back out shortly after with the tooth in his hand.  He told me that he let Daddy try taking it out, and with just one slight pull, it was out.   

     On our drive back from Socal, Maxim had invited the boys over to hang out.  So on Sunday morning, we dropped the boys off at Maxim’s and Stuart and I began our new year resolution, ie. exercise.  We played tennis for quite a long time, and for once I won a set against from Stuart.  We went grocery shopping to stock up the house before picking up the boys.  In the afternoon Cole came over to play, and the boys hung out together for a few hours.  Before 7pm, we headed out to go to the Gopals for a new year gathering.  The boys were off to play with Rohan as soon as we arrived, and they only came over to us for a few times to eat.  The adults just hung out to drink, talk and eat, and later played a game. We also gathered the kids to dance a couple of songs toward the end of the night.  Hours just went by and 2017 was coming to an end.  Shortly after 11pm, Stuart and I had decided that we would head out and be home before new year.  The group opened a bottle of champagne to cheer with us before we said goodbye.  When we arrived, we turned on the TV to ring in the New Year with some live program.  The year had ended and it was nice in the comfort of home.

    We drove down to SoCal on 12/27.  It had been awhile since we drove during the holidays and we had forgotten how busy the traffic was.  We made it to the grandparents after 7+ hours of driving.  As soon as we settled in, we started opening the presents grandparents had for us, and it was like a second Christmas as we all received many.  We then had the dinner Grandma prepared for us.  After dinner, the boys broke into their first toy, ie. remote controlled bumper cars, and they were entertained by that for quite a long time.

   The next few days we wanted to hang out and spend time with the grandparents.  We did have a couple of outings during the day.  Grandma and us went to the movie to see Coco.  This was the first time for us sitting in a theater with recliners and it was definitely a plus.  We also enjoyed the movie and some of us shed some tear toward the end of the movie too. 

   On another day, we decided to check out the Griffin Observatory where the boys and I had never been to, and Grandma came along with us.  When we arrived, we realized how crazy busy this place was.  We drove a long time looking for parking and Stuart finally decided to drop us off.  It turned out that he could not find parking even down in the hills below, so we figured that Grandma, the boys and I had to tour the place on our own.  The boys were very disappointed that daddy was not there, but we did our best to look through the exhibitions.  We skipped the planetarium show due to the timing of it.  The one thing the boys were quite interested in was measuring our weights in different planets; we had a good laugh from that.  When we went through all the exhibition rooms, we were ready to walk out to meet Stuart at our drop off place.  The phone reception was very poor; but Stuart and I managed to communicate periodically.  It turned out that they closed the road and he could not come up to pick us up.  So the four of us had to eventually walk down the hill to find him; fortunately the walk was better than I was worried about.  When we finally saw Stuart waiting by the car, the boys ran all the way to him and we all were so happy.  Poor Stuart was driving around so much and was feeling guilty not able to come back to us; he wished he could have go back in time and picked Santa Monica for our outing instead.  I think the observatory was nice and we just have to find another non holiday day to return.

    The grandparents also treated us to dinner out a couple of the nights.  The boys really enjoyed spending time with them.  This was a nice trip and it was good to see grandparents doing well.

    Stuart had to work this day and I decided to take the boys to the mall to buy Logan some new pants.  Our initial plan was to watch a movie as well, but since Stuart was able to play tennis during his lunch break, we returned from the mall after shopping.  After playing tennis, the boys rested at home to play games before we headed out for their martial art lesson.  Afterward, as planned, Cole and family came over to have dinner with us.  I made pot roast, ham and some side dishes for our meal, and they bought over desserts and drinks for us.  The boys and Cole quickly ate the dinner and they were excused to play upstairs.  We chatted at the dining table for awhile, and the evening finally ended and our guests walked home.  We quickly packed for our short trip before we went to bed.

    The boys woke up right at 7am and were excited to open presents soon.  We quickly ate our breakfast; then we began by going through our stockings and next migrated over to open all the presents under our tree.  The boys were happy to get what they wanted, and the rest of the morning they went off to play with the new toys and Logan back to his favorite Roblox too.  Even though it was just the four of us, I decided to make us a turkey dinner for the holiday.  We enjoyed an early meal as we had planned to go to Christmas in the Park in the evening.  As we expected that it would be crowded, we parked farther away but the walk was not bad at all.  The weather was nice and it was fun to walk through all the festivities.  We also watched the stage performance too.  This was a nice way to wrap up our favorite holiday of the year.