We had a quiet and peaceful Thanksgiving at home this year.  We did not have any visitors and we did not do any Turkey Trot either due to the pandemic.  Thus we got to sleep in, and I did not get out of bed until 9:15am which was probably one of the latest ever.  We made pancakes for late breakfast, and had spam masubi per the boys request for late lunch.  We had a nice zoom chat with the grandparents, then with Dora/Robb and Gloria/Chuck.  It was good to see them and made us feel a bit more spirit for this holiday.  While the boys were using their own computers with the grandparent’s chat, they were messing around to make us laugh.

    Later for dinner, we voted to have ham along with a few side dishes like sweet potato casserole, roasted potatoes and green beans; we enjoyed this late dinner very much.  At the end of the day we also had some pumpkin pie by Connor’s request to wrap up this holiday.

    Last weekend Logan suddenly invited all of us to a weekend challenge on Fitbit, and this got us motivated to get steps again.  Dora had lost her Fitbit thus she is no longer a contender.  Logan and Connor were so into it that they were willing to take longer walks and Connor even wanted to walk another round with me to get extra.  Since Chuck was working the weekend, he often gets tons of steps at work.  On Sunday night when we realized how high Chuck’s steps was, Logan surprised us by not giving up.  He continued to step around the house after dinner and he managed to climb up by 5k and took the crown.  He proudly said “I did the impossible”.

   The next day Connor also wanted to win a challenge.  He asked me to take a walk with him during lunch and later he walked some more after school.  After dinner, both boys kept walking inside the house.  Connor did make it and won the daily showdown.

     My friends and I had planned to do this workshop at the Board and Brush back in March, then it was postponed due to the pandemic.  The place had reopened a couple of months ago and we finally decided to do it last Sunday.  Michelle, Robyn and I met up on Sunday for this 3 hour workshop.  We had chosen our piece ahead of time, and the shop had prepared the stencils for us.  We were given a plain piece of board; we sanded it down and stained it.  We placed the stencil on it and we dapped paints to add the characters.  We then sanded the surface down briefly and finally waxed it to wrap up the project.  All three of our projects came out really nice  It was also awesome to catch up with Michelle and Robyn while we worked on our project. 

     Connor had outgrown Logan’s old kid bike for awhile now and we had been searching for an used bike.  Finally we saw a good possibility and Stuart and I went to check it out on Saturday.  The bike was an older model, but a reliable one and still in a reasonable condition, thus we bought and took it home.  After adjusting down the seat and did some minor cleaning, it fit Connor quite well.  All of us accompanied Connor to go for a short test ride around the neighborhood, Connor seemed to like it ok.

   I am thrilled that we finally found a bike for Connor, so now we could ride bikes again as a family and I could stop looking on the websites.  Saturday was definitely a great day.  Getting a bike was an icing on the cake after the incredible official news that we will have a new president in 2021.

     This year the boys had decided not to go trick and treat, but we still wanted to prepare for others if they arrived.  Because of the pandemic, we had bought a pumpkin bucket to place in front of the house so kids could just pick up.

    Connor was excited for this day and was doing his usual countdown.  The night before he wanted to give us a preview of dress up, so he wore his animal winter hat.  On the day of Halloween, our neighbor knew that the boys would not be trick n treating, thus he dropped off even bigger chocolate bars than any other years; the boys were thrilled.  Throughout the day, Connor had come down in old costumes to show us. 

      By evening time, we set out the bucket with candies and Stuart also set up the fog machine.  We then had our dinner while watching The Nightmare Before Christmas from the boys’ request.  To our surprise, the whole evening we only had 2 set of kids coming to our house.  They did like the fog machine and we could see their reaction with our security camera.  Connor dressed up and scared me with his zombie costume, then he walked around different part of the house to get treats.  Sometimes after 8pm, Stuart and I took Buddy out.  The neighborhood was quite quiet with no one walking outside and the only noise was from one house having a party.  There were only 5 houses (including us) prepared with goodies.  The boys were a bit disappointed how quiet the evening was, but we all hope to make up the fun next year.

    Stuart had noticed Buddy being bothered by his ear for a few weeks now, so Stuart tried to help clean his ear.  Finally he decided that we should take him in for a check and an ear wash.  I took Buddy in last Wed (10/28/2020) and the vet confirmed that he has a yeast infection and this is not uncommon for dogs with flappy ears.  He placed some medicine in that ear and will stay for a month to treat the infection.  Once infection cleared, we can consider prevention treatment thereafter.

    While Buddy was there, they checked his weight and it indeed went up again to 114 lbs.  I talked with the vet about that and we will switch him slowly to a less calorie diet to keep him in healthier weight.