I read the Elf book to the boys a few nights ago.  We also placed "Elfie" on the shelf for his first appearance this year, but the boys did not see him at all in the morning.  We had to draw their attention to the area later that evening until they finally saw him; they were excited and even tried to eat their dinner faster while being "watched".  However, Logan seemed skeptical about the elf initially.  He said to me quietly a couple of times that the elf was just a toy and that we were the ones who moved him around, but at the same time, he seemed nervous not to believe in it.  Then the next morning when Logan saw Elfie on top of the blind, he was happy and immediately said “He is real because you can’t put him all the way up there”.

     Connor earned the Letter Crown last week.  He was so proud to show it to me when I came home.  He does seem to know his letters quite well now and he is trying to write some of them too.  He also likes to learn writing all of our names, including Scottie too.

     I was so happy to return from my one week trip to Hong Kong.  This was the longest time I was away from the three boys and this was an emotionally difficult trip as well.  My mom and I met up with my three sisters at SFO and we traveled together to Hong Kong.  We arrived in the evening, checked in to our hotel and attempted to get some sleep.  The next day we visited with our 98 year old grandma and uncles and auntie.  Other than hard of hearing and poor memory, Grandma is still her cute old self.  It was so wonderful spending some time with them.  The application for my dad’s burial had been so lengthy and painful for the past months; the permit was finally issued on Monday.  So the burial was able to take place as planned on 11/26.  The ceremony was emotional but we all were pleased that our dad was finally resting in peace with our birth mom and in a nice location. 

    After that day, we were all ready to return home, but we managed to fill up the last two remaining days in Hong Kong.  We visited with our cousin who just gave birth, went to see Grandma another time, took an outing to the district where we used to live in, and I had dinner with an old dear friend.  We then spent our last evening with our uncle/auntie/cousin and did some sightseeing.  The return travel day did not seem too bad as I was so excited to come home and I was entertained by some photos and updates from Michelle to fill me in with their Thanksgiving celebration in US. 

   I was so happy to see the boys at the airport.  Connor and Logan came running to me and we had the longest hugs with each other.  They both told me how much they missed me.  Connor seemed to be more chatty and clearer with his pronunciation in just one week.  He kept asking why I was in Hong Kong and why I stayed in the hotel.

  Stuart was kept busy and did a good job taking care of everyone including Scottie.  The first part of their week, they had Grandpa and Grandma visiting them.  The boys enjoyed the grandparents a lot.  I was informed that Logan was sad when they were leaving but Connor tried to console and remind him of my return soon and said “Don’t you like mommy?”  On Thanksgiving, Michelle and Ted graciously invited the three boys over for celebration.  They all had a great time playing and enjoyed a wonderful meal. 

    Now with this trip behind us, Stuart and I will love to return to our routine, start getting ready for Christmas and hopefully get back to some regular exercise.

     Scottie had been so persistently asking to go outside that we had decided supervised outings is not going to cut it.  My sisters suggested we buy a tracking system for Scottie in case he got lost again, so we purchased one and Scottie was all set.  On the first day out, Scottie was gone for a long time.  Stuart decided to use the tracking system and finally found him sitting in the front yard four houses down from us.  Since then, Scottie has been enjoying his outing everyday, returning to the backyard and asking to come home.  He is definitely happier and not crying as much inside the house now.

    My mom arrived yesterday.  In preparation of her arrival, we had informed the boys about it.  Both Logan and Connor had asked about the reasons why Gong Gong was not coming too, so we had to re-visit the difficult topic again and again as the boys kept bringing it up.

   Yesterday, the boys, especially Connor, were excited to go to the airport to pick Pou Pou up, so we purposely got to the airport a bit earlier to walk around.  But unfortunately these days there were no good places to view the airplanes.  At last we were able to see a purple tail of an airplane which Connor has been talking about even today.  The boys were nice to Pou Pou when they saw her and they tried to use their very limited Chinese to say hello. 

    So far, the boys have learned a couple more phrases of Chinese today.  Maybe they will become slightly less limited in Chinese one day.

    Shortly after we moved into the house, somehow Stuart invented a game with the boys called The Number Game.  Since then, the boys are obsessed with it and want to play it every night after dinner.  Basically Stuart would ask an addition question (ie.8+8), and if the boys answer correctly, he would try to catch them.  Logan tries to answer well so he can be chased.  Connor also actively participates by saying random numbers in hope to answer one right.  The boys get so excited and giggle through the entire game.  They also definitely get plenty of exercise from running around the house.  I tried to play the game with them once or twice, but catching them was not easy and was quite tiring.