It was a major storm that Sunday.  It was scary watching the big wind and as predicted, the power went out at 2pm.  The boys could not play video games but it was cozy just hanging out together drinking hot cocoa.  In the evening Stuart wanted to watch the Warriors game, so we headed to BJ to have dinner.  We had a good meal; the power was still out when we returned home.  Finally after the boys just went to bed, the power resumed.  We were very thankful that we had our fence replaced in August, otherwise we did not think the fence would have survived this big storm.

   I was looking forward to going out to a course on our anniversary, but it rained in the morning, thus we had to scratch the plan. Instead we went to hang out at a mall and had a very nice lunch at a seafood restaurant.  We played a board game in the afternoon.  It was a relaxing day spent together.

    We had a beautiful weather on the Halloween night.  It was perfect for trick and treating.  As a result, we had tons of kids coming to the door.  Often, we had lines of 15-20 kids taking turns at a time.  The boys did not want to dress up this year, thus they were in charge of activating the fog machine when we had trick n treaters.  One of our neighbors had made a haunted garage which had attracted lots of visitors to the neighborhood too.  Stuart eventually convinced Connor to put on his Zombie costume to go for a stroll.  Connor made it through the haunted garage on his own and was rewarded to two big bars by the neighbor.

    On Monday while I was in AZ, I got an electronic notification that Logan was excuse earlier before school ended.  It turned out that Logan might have had a migraine headache and nausea after lunch, thus he finally had to go to the office at the last period of the day.  He had the nurse called Stuart and he was picked up early.  Because of these symptoms, the school has a protocol requiring a negative COVID19 test before Logan could return to school.  Unfortunately I was not home and Stuart had to deal with these all by himself.  He talked with the nurse, an admin and the principal to clarify the situation and confirm their required protocol.  He also had to take Logan to get tested the next morning.

    Logan remained not feeling well for a couple hours after school on Monday, but after a good nap, he felt better and the symptoms all resolved.  Logan tried to do some work at home the next two days to stay on track.  Stuart had to continue his work while taking Logan to get tested and watching Logan.  Fortunately on Thursday early morning, we received the negative result and Logan could return to school.

    Dora was invited to give a presentation at a conference being held in Phoenix, thus I had planned to go with her for support.  When the date got closer, the conference unfortunately changed to a virtual meeting instead, but Dora and I had decided to keep our planned trip and visit AZ together. We had a short trip, thus we planned for one day at Sedona and one day at Phoenix. 

     We arrived at the airport at similar time on Sunday and we drove to a town near Sedona.  We were able to see the city at sundown and had a nice dinner in the village.  The next morning we woke up early to get to a very popular hiking trail, Devil’s Bridge.  We made it in time for parking and after an interesting beautiful hike on red rocks, we made it to the scenic spot.  We decided to wait for our picture time which we were glad that we had.  The hikers there helped each other to capture the moments and our pictures came out awesome.  After a troll in the village and a good lunch, we left the beautiful Sedona to drive back to Phoenix.  Sedona was definitely a nice place and we were there in a good weather; thus we were happy that we made the drive for it.

     In Phoenix, we did not find it as interesting.  We walked around one famous street and had dinner.  The next morning we hiked in Papago Park to find “Hole in the wall” and saguaro cactus; it was a nice hike there too but felt very different from Sedona.  Overall this AZ was a nice visit and it was awesome hanging out with Dora.  I did miss the family and so I brought home two “cactus friends” for the boys.  Here are our photos.

    We had initially planned to go to Maui during the boys’ fall break, but we finally cancelled it since Connor has not been vaccinated.  Instead, we planned a short trip to Cambria and we booked a house this time.  I am very happy that we made this decision as this trip was much more relaxing.  The house had everything we needed and we could spread out more.  It also had a beautiful deck where we could hang out around a firepit looking out into the nature.  We also loved the quieter beaches and awesome hiking trails in Cambria, and we enjoyed strolling in the quaint village.  It was the Scarecrow Festival at Cambria this month, thus it was very interesting seeing varieties of scarecrows all over town.  There was also an elephant seal rookery there; we had fun looking for the seals.  Buddy seemed quite relaxed there as well; we had gone out for a couple short trips on our own, and Buddy had a good nap. Here are the photos to sum up our wonderful fall break trip!