During the first week of school, we were in the heatwave; it was in the low 100 degrees several days in a roll.  We were told that there might be a potential rolling blackout.  On Saturday night while we were taking a walk later than usual (at 8 something), we saw the power went out on the street.  As it turned out, it was not a planned outage, it was a blown transformer.

   We had bought a generator awhile ago, and Stuart decided to put it in use then.  We set it up in the dark; it worked well to power the fridge back up.  But since it was noisy; we turned it off right before 11pm, so our neighbors would not hate us.  That night we slept downstairs as it was cooler but it was a very restless night.  At 6am when we were finally tired and in deep sleep, we heard the crazy loud thunder storm which we all know had caused major fires in CA we are still dealing with.

    By Sunday afternoon, we heard no real update on the power and we knew we had to go somewhere to cool down.  We discussed options; later we decided to go to a hotel especially since we wanted the boys to have internet for school the next day.  We found a decent hotel that would take Buddy too, so we quickly packed up and drove over.  There was a bad news when we arrived; it turned out that the hotel location was having a blackout the entire day but it was due to return.  After we dropped off our belongings in the room, we came back to the lobby as it was cooler.  Sitting there for the 15 to 20 minutes made me more worried about this decision and I started to wonder if we should change our plan to leave. At that moment, we received the best news that the power had returned.  I can’t describe how happy and relieved I was, and we all returned to the room to enjoy the AC.  The rest of the night, we had picked up dinner, played games and watched TV; we could finally relax.

     The next Monday the power in the house still had not returned.  We decided that I would go to work while Stuart and the boys stayed in the hotel.  As it turned out, Logan’s school was cancelled for the day since the school lost their power too.  In order to be fair, we let Connor off the day as well, so the two of them played in the room while Stuart tried to do some work.  Before lunch time we heard some improvement on the transformer issue but the power was not quite back yet. I came during lunch break to help the family check out and we all went home. After I left them at home later to return to work, according to Stuart, the house was getting more and more intolerably hot in the afternoon.  Finally the good news came at 4pm and the power was back.  It took quite awhile and a lot out of our AC, the house eventually cooled down, and our home is back to our comfortable place.

     The decision was made to do distance learning for the first few weeks of this school year.  We were not really mentally ready for the school to start, but over the last weekend before school start, we did try to do some preparation.  We had the boys cleaned up their rooms and their desks.  We bought them both a laptop stand.  Also during that week, they each had their school pick up time; they brought home textbooks and some school supplies. The schools were doing last minute preparati

     Toward the end of the summer, we wanted to encourage the kids to do more activities, thus we bought them a new 4 square ball.  They did get into it the first week, and often wanted to go to the school playground to play.  They do prefer to play 4 players instead of 2 players, so Stuart and I tried to join them when we could.   Last week we were in a heatwave, then fires and bad air quality issue, thus we had not played for awhile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDwlU6D6EJI

    Connor was so excited for this birthday that he was looking forward for July to come, then as soon as July 1st came, he started counting down to his birthday every day.  Daily he also asked us if we were as excited as he was turning 10.  Of course, he was looking forward to any presents; when it got closer to the big date, he could not help it and kept begging us to give him hints.

    Finally the day came.  All three of us and Buddy rushed to his bedroom to wake the 10 year old boy.  Connor was so happy and planned the whole day which mainly involved game time, what he wanted to eat, and swimming.  He did not ask about the presents, but then we presented him with a bunch of puzzles to solve to lead to his presents.  Connor was intrigued and enjoyed solving each puzzle to get to one gift at a time.  Our planning did turn out well; the whole present opening lasted much longer than usual to a point that Connor complained being tired of solving puzzles.  Connor was happy to get all presents he received at the end.

     The rest of the day Connor enjoyed more game time, swimming and cake.  At the end, Connor was telling us that he was sad though that the day was ending.  He wanted his birthday to last longer.  Now we have two 2-digit boys.

    One week after we stopped Connor’s stomach med, Connor started to complain about tummy ache and occasional lump in the throat again.  By then it was just a few days before his highly anticipated birthday, Connor started to get worried that he would be sick on his birthday and got very sad one night when it often bothered him most.  Thus we contacted his doctor and we were suggested to restart the medication for two more weeks. With that, we fortunately managed to avoid Connor’s stomach from getting too bad and his big day did not get ruined later.

    It has been a week since we started the med, but Connor is still being bothered by the tummy and throat mildly.  We might have to consider bringing him to see the doctor later.