Today, Logan had his second performance of the year.  Stuart and I met up at school and we were soon allowed into the classroom to take our seats.  Once everyone arrived, the kids walked in single file from the courtyard.  Logan smiled to us and he did not have his usual “zombie reach” (the outstretched arms) while he walked into his position.  The show then began right away.  They sang a couple of songs, then each kid took turns saying their names and telling us their favorite food.  They sang a few more songs and did a couple of rhymes.  The 15 minutes show was very entertaining, and all the kids did a wonderful job.  Logan participated very well, and he was on beat with every movement.  He was a lot more engaged this time compared to the performance five months ago.  Logan was so proud and happy when he came over to us afterward.  The teacher apparently had talked with Logan about his “zombie reach”, and Logan told her that he would not be doing it as he is growing up now.  Before we took off from school, Logan even asked the teacher when the next performance will be.

    At dinner tonight, we talked about how much we enjoyed the performance.  Logan said that he knew we liked it as we were smiling during the show.  I then tried to ask him about the practices they had done, but Logan gave me the usual non-sharing attitude.  Yesterday, Logan had suggested that Connor should come watch his show too, but after some consideration, we decided not to bring Connor to avoid too much distraction.  But tonight we kept our promise and showed the boys the video that Stuart took.  Logan was so excited to see himself on TV and Connor was very focused watching the entire show.  Connor did get a little jealous and asked about when it would be his turn to be on TV.  Stuart is trying to clean up the video a bit before posting; it will be coming soon.

    Logan and I joined Robyn/Peyton and Michelle/Mckayla to watch a children musical production of Aladdin this afternoon.  We purposely let Logan watched the Aladdin movie on and off the past couple of weeks to be familiar with the story, and as a result, Logan was quite excited to go watch the show today.  We met up with Robyn and Michelle at the theater a little before the show started.  The kids were excited while we waited; Logan and Mckayla were making funny faces to each other too.  Once we entered the theater, the three kids chose to sit together.  They were all a bit too short to see the stage clearly, so they were finally ready when Michelle borrowed booster seats for them.  Once the show began, they all looked very engaged.  The show was well done and very entertaining.  The most amazing part was how young those kid actors were, the youngest ones were only 9.  During the entire show, Logan was eagerly chapping his hands after each segment; he even smiled at times.  I also heard Logan humming one of the songs during the intermission.  Toward the end, Logan suddenly whispered to me that he missed daddy.

    After the show, I asked the kids which were their favorite characters.  Logan liked Aladdin and the Monkey,  Mckayla’s were Jasmine and the monkey while Peyton also like the monkey.  At dinner tonight, Stuart asked Logan what he would wish for if he was given three wishes.  After some consideration, he said he wanted to be a pirate and wanted a huge airplane.  It took him even longer before he randomly mentioned a couple of other things, a police car and a soldier.  He then giggled for a long time when Stuart pretended to be a genie to grant his wishes.  Also at bedtime, Stuart talked with Logan about how lucky he was to go to the show with two girls, but Logan corrected Stuart that he went with five girls.

     Today we decided that Stuart needed a day to rest, so I tried to occupy the kids on my own for most of the day.  This morning I had them out in the backyard while I tried to work on the garden.  The boys played with sand and water, then with water guns and spray bottle.  I wanted to move things around, the newly placed mulch to one area, then some small rocks to another area.  Connor volunteered to help me first, then Logan followed as well.  They had fun wearing the large work gloves and picked up the clean mulch into the bucket, then they especially loved carrying the bucket to dump them onto the open area.  They were so eager that I had to make sure they took turns.  When we moved onto picking up the small rocks, I stopped their use of the heavy buckets which finally ended their help to me.  They resumed their own playing while I continued to work some more.  We were out in the yard for at least an hour and a half before we returned inside the house to have our lunch.

    In the afternoon, I decided to take the boys to play at the swimming pool as it was hot.  Logan was fine with the idea but Connor wanted to stay home with Daddy until I offered him to bring a water gun.  After we arrived at the pool, I put sunscreen on the boys while they put it on my shoulders and back.  We had to start with a snack as usual on the lounge chair before we moved on to the pool side.  They both were happy sitting by the steps and playing with some pool toys while having their feet in the water.  Logan had made it clear that he did not want to go into the water, and I did not want to push either as I was on solo duty.  The boys had a lot of fun playing on their own.  Unfortunately 20 minutes later, there was an announcement to clear the pool for 30 minutes as they needed to clean up some contamination (bird poo).  We just hung out a bit longer at the lounge chair watching the action before we cleaned up to get home.

     We had planned to attend Jeannette and Fredric’s wedding on Saturday, so we arranged a babysitter to watch the boys.  Mollie (the boys’ ex-teacher) arrived just right before 3:30pm, and it took just a few minutes to orient her to the house and the boys’ routine.  Logan seemed excited to see Mollie and started bringing different toys to ask her to play.  Connor on the other hand was very nervous and was hiding from her.  He even spent a couple of minutes on his bed on the verge of crying.  He came holding onto my hand and dragged me toward the door hoping that he could leave with us, then he did the same thing with Stuart too.  He then broke out crying as well.  Stuart and I just said goodbyes quickly and left to avoid dragging out this separation for Connor.  Mollie did text me shortly later to tell us that Connor was fine after we left and played Legos with Logan and her.

     We arrived at the winery in Pleasanton in good timing.  We chatted with Theresa and Martin who were there first, then the rest of our friends/coworkers slowly arrived.  The ceremony was held in the courtyard; it started a bit late, but it was lovely.  Afterward we got our drinks, Stuart and I took a break inside the winery.  Shortly after group photos with the bride and groom, the reception hall opened up for everyone.  We enjoyed the nice meal and company of everyone at our table (Michelle, Ted, Theresa, Martin, Julie, Erika and Victor) while watching the wedding entertainment.  We also had fun at the photo booth and loved the photos.  We waited until the cake cutting was completed and the open dancing started before we left to drive home.

      Mollie had texted me at 8:30pm to inform us that the boys were sound asleep.  When we arrived home before 11pm, she told us that they had a good time playing together.  They played with water in the backyard, and played with toys in different rooms.  They enjoyed pizza for dinner while watching TV.  When she suggested that it was time to start the bedtime routine Logan was sad that the evening was ending; he later told her that he wished to see her again.  Connor was a bit sad without us at bedtime, but both boys went down to sleep without any complaints.  We were happy that our first babysitting of both boys went very well.