I was lucky to have a beautiful long weekend for my birthday.  On Saturday Stuart wanted to take the boys out to buy me presents, so we all headed to the mall together.  I dropped them off while they did their things and I took my time to shop around as well.  I heard that the boys did great looking for something for me and they also used their money to buy them.  It was a successful shopping trip.

    Stuart and I played tennis on Sat too and I did well keeping up with Stuart this time.  We ended up stopping at 6 vs 6 and had a great exercise.

     We played a short course of golf on my birthday morning.  Connor received a golf cart recently, three of us have carts now and it was a lot easier.  For this round, it was Logan’s turn to do well.  He had some awesome tee shots and he made a few on green with one.  Connor had a bit harder time, but he did not give up and kept trying.  Logan, Connor and I could definitely work on improving our putting to help our scores.  At the end of the game, Logan was only 2 points away from Stuart, and he beat me by quite a bit.  I always had a good time on the course.

    We played some Wii games this weekend that we had not played for a long time.  We played bowling, table tennis, archery, swordplay, etc.  These are awesome family games.

      We had some yummy eating this weekend too.  Stuart barbequed shrimps one night, we had a sushi dinner on my birthday and we wrapped up with an ice cream cake for me.  To top it off, we had Monday to clean up and relax.  I love having a 3 day off, and the boys loved that as well.

     The boys were very excited to stay up on New Year Eve to welcome 2022.  They had lined up the whole night with what they would like to do which included movies and game times.

     Stuart and I did add a surprise for the boys.  After Christmas, Connor had shared that he was slightly disappointed that there was not a scavenger hunt during present opening like we did with the previous two Christmas.  So we prepared one for them to play on New Year Eve.  We came up with eight clues for them to find eight letters and afterward they had to unscramble them to find the location for a little treasure.  The boys worked together nicely and quickly to solve the clues and they were able to successfully find themselves two little flurry friends.  The boys enjoyed this unexpected scavenger hunt.

    This year, for some reasons, none of us were too tired in the evening.  We had no problems going to midnight to ring in the new year together.  Afterward, the kids slowly got ready for bed; Stuart and I ended up staying up to 2am before turning in as well.  Buddy was very confused why we were up so long; he mainly slept on the coach while waiting for us.  We all wish for a great and healthy year in 2022!  Hope our current situation will finally turn around and improve this year.

    On 12/26, we took a drive down south to visit the grandparents.  We did not think about being the day after Christmas or being Sunday could be busy on the road, so we left the house a bit too late.  We hit the most congested traffic we ever encountered.  The drive was very slow, and the two times we stopped for food and bathroom break were met with tons of other commuters.  We ended up skipping food purchase in order to avoid further delay.  We were impressed that the boys and Buddy did not complain at all about this crazy long road trip.  Stuart was getting very tired and had to play music to stay awake.  After this brutally long 9 hours with no lunch, we made it to our destination. 

     After this eventful drive, it was nice to spend two full days with the grandparents. The grandparents prepared presents for us when we arrived, so we enjoyed the true boxing day at their house. We received some fun games too, i.e. Rubix race game and Mexican dominoes; we ended up spending lots of fun time playing them while we were there.  Connor showed his speedy ability and dominated us with the Rubix race.  Logan played Chess with Grandpa and they ended up being tied after two games.  Grandpa happily shared with us his hobby with the different string instruments; he also showed the boys his new scooter and let them have a ride.  Grandma made us a nice holiday dinner,  Stuart was able to help Grandma with a few projects in return to earn our keeps. It was wonderful spending these quality time with the grandparents and seeing them doing well.

    For this trip to SoCal, we rented a house to stay in.  This place was small but adequate.  The boys liked having a good spot for their computers for gaming.  However one unfortunate thing was the neighbor’s dog barked constantly and gave us an early wake up call every morning.  Overall it was nice to have a bigger space than a hotel room, and it was a bit easier for Buddy too. 

     We wrapped up this trip with a smooth drive home. Thus it was a successful trip seeing the grandparents.

     We all looked forward to the break from school and to our all time favorite holiday.  The boys enjoyed finding a treat in the advent calendar daily plus counting down to the special day.  This year we also continued our tradition of watching various Christmas themed movies, Klaus, Christmas Carol, Elf,etc. throughout the break.  On Christmas eve, the boys decorated a gingerbread house, and Connor also helped me bake cookies for us and for Santa.  They also went to bed early that night to welcome the big day.

    On Christmas day, the boys were very excited to get us out of bed and through breakfast early.  We began our festivities with stockings first as usual.  Buddy did not get much in it but just a small treat.  Then we all migrated to the tree and started opening our presents.  The boys were good nowadays taking their time and enjoying looking through each other’s presents.  We all were very lucky and received many cool gifts.  Buddy was happy with what he received as well.  The rest of the day, the boys were kept busy playing with their new gifts and toys.

Here is the video clip of our present opening this year.

Here are the photos I took.

A few weeks ago, we gathered to have a brunch with Lawrence who had retired a few months ago.  He was the one who hired all of us and thus our group will always have this special connection with him.  We had a wonderful time chatting with Lawrence and each other for a couple of hours.  It was also a beautiful day to have an outdoor dining experience too.

     A couple of weeks ago, my pharmacy team had a virtual party.  For those on site, we could go to the suite first to pick up a nice box of lunch and take a few photos with the photo booth before returning to our computer for the virtual party.  The theme was black and white, so many of the us dressed accordingly.  I was having a vision issue back then and happened to schedule a dilated eye exam the same morning.  This was the worst dilated exam I ever had and my vision was so blurry for hours after. Thus I had to say the timing of this eye exam took away part of the fun time for me for this work party.  But overall it was still nice to see some of my work friends in person and took a few photos.