Connor loves celebrations.  After the New Year, he has been asking how many days it will be before his birthday.  Since the wait of 200 days+ was too long for him, he has just been focusing on mine.  He drew me a few cards and wrote me several messages on the days leading to my special day.  Stuart had the boys write me a greeting card, and Connor happily presented it to me the birthday morning.  Logan is often absent-minded about these things, but he told me Happy Birthday a few times throughout the day which made me happy too.

   My birthday on Friday was definitely overshadowed a bit with the excitement of the Tahoe trip.  Stuart and I ended up packing in the morning and having a quick lunch before picking up the boys after their lunches at school.  Connor was so happy and ran all the way across the playground to meet me.  At Logan’s school, it took Connor and I some times to spot Logan in the middle of playground that was full of kids, then we followed him to his classroom to pack up.  Quickly at home, we dropped off their school things, made a potty run, and we were on our way for the drive.

     The first hour on the road was uneventful. Then I noticed a major accident in Fairfield on my phone GPS, but by then it was too late to take the route to Stockton where the Tsaos were en route.  We decided to take the detour to local streets according to the GPS and we apparently saved an hour from being stuck on the freeway.  Once we hopped back on the freeway, the rest of the way was fine and the boys were happily watching the videos.  At 6pm, we arrived at our rental house at Tahoe and met up with the Tsaos who had comfortably settled in.  We took a tour of the beautiful house, and with the help from the boys, we picked the bedroom with the bunk bed to stay for the next 3 days.  Stuart and I left to pick up something from a store while the boys stayed to watch TV with Brandon and Peyton.  By the time we returned, Dave almost had the dinner prepared for us.  We were all very hungry and enjoyed the yummy dumplings, eggrolls and noodle salad.  Afterward, I was happy as they gathered to sing me Happy Birthday and Connor blew out the candle with me.  After eating a slice of cake, we started getting the kids down for the night.  All of them were too excited to go to sleep and they seemed to take turns coming out from the room.  Logan loved being on the upper bunk; later he complained that Connor was bothering him while he tried to sleep.  By 10pm the kids seemed to be finally quiet, and that when the Kaos arrived after their traffic laden drive up.  Mckayla and Marcus handed me their beautifully handmade birthday cards for me and then they were sent to bed.  The adults hung out to talk for another hour before we all parted to go to bed.

    More about what we did on Saturday on the next blog.  Fast forwarding to that evening;  Theresa and Martin arrived in the afternoon, and we all gathered for a big hotpot dinner with all the ingredients everyone brought up from home.  After dinner, I was lucky to have another round of birthday cake from Robyn and Dave and another birthday song from everyone.  Connor helped me blowing the candle again and we all enjoyed the chocolate cake before the kids were sent off to bed. 

    This year’s birthday is definitely special one that I will remember fondly.