The girls gathered together with me on Zoom Friday night prior to my big day.  Thuy had made us some shrimp toast ahead of time, so we could all toast them up to have while we chatted.  Theresa had also dropped off earlier in the day a bottle of wine along with the desserts the girls got me, so I could enjoy them in the evening.  During the call, Theresa had prepared with birthday games for us to play together and we had a great laugh with them.  This was a fun 2.5 hours. I appreciate every moment of it, and I had a full tummy afterward too.

   The boys wanted a game chair, so they received one for Christmas.  After the chair, Connor’s table became too small, thus we found him a new desk.  Connor is quite happy with it and now Logan wanted one first.

   Tonight is the last night of the boys’ 2 week break.  We stayed home every day as expected but we had a good time.  The boys enjoyed the game time, and we managed to get them to do some physical activities.  We made up this Bingo game for them to do biking, basketball, 4-squares, running or tennis to earn some rewards.  We also watched a lot of movies.  We re-watched some classics and enjoyed some new ones.  The boys really like the Muppets now.

   The boys are not thrilled to return to school tomorrow, but next semester is ready for them.

     The boys decided to stay past midnight on NYE again this year and they were thrilled to pack the evening with activities.  Lisa gave us a gift full of cookies and candies along with party hats and whistles, thus we made great use of everything that night. 

     After we ate dinner and took Buddy out for a walk, we finished up the Terraforming Mars board game first. Then the boys were off to play video games with their friends and planned to join us by 10pm to watch a movie.  We decided to watch the Muppets movie; we all enjoyed it very much while we ate popcorns and freshly baked cookies.  The movie ended just in time for the countdown.  We all cheered and blew the whistles to welcome 2021.  The boys were still full of energy!

      It was a tough year last year and thus we are happy to see it passed.  The COVID 19 pandemic is definitely the worst thing we ever experienced.  For California, it all started on Friday 3/13/2020 when everything shut down.  Stuart had already began working from home then, and the boys joined him to stay home for distance learning.  California later dealt with some of worst wildfires that led to poor air quality for weeks; we ended up stuck indoors only and could not do any outdoor exercises.  Later we had some of the hottest days and we even lost power for days.  That was a tough summer.

     Outside of California, there were also other horrible things that happened, like the situation in Hong Kong, the police brutality led to Black Lives Matter protests, and some crazy things led by our president.  Fortunately after days of worrying, the election result was what we were hoping for.  There is hopes in 2021.

    We did have a few things we are thankful for in 2020.  We, along with our extended families, have been staying safe, Stuart and I both have our jobs, the boys are doing fine staying at home, and Buddy is happy to have us home with him.  We are definitely looking forward to a safer and healthy 2021!

   Despite dealing with this crazy and worrisome pandemic, we managed to have a cozy lovely Christmas on our own.  Connor and Logan both were counting down to our favorite holiday, and keeping an eye on the presents underneath the tree.  To keep it simple this year, Connor helped me make gingerbread cookies for ourselves and for Santa.  Logan also helped us decorate some.  They both volunteered to go to bed relatively earlier on the 24th, so they could wake up early on Christmas. 

     After eating breakfast, the boys were totally ready to open presents, and Buddy was thrilled to sniff every package with us.  We took turns opening our presents and we enjoyed looking through what we received.  Connor was happy that we also made a little riddle for them to solve to find the largest presents, ie.gaming chair, at the end.  This year we were all very pleased with the presents, and we spent the next few hours playing and looking through them.

   This year we were fortunate that we could at least see Grandparents and my sisters’ families virtually.  Logan was good chatting with the grandparents while Connor kept changing his backgrounds to entertain us.  It was good to see Yvonne, Allen, Katie and Kevin on screen; it has been a long time since we last saw them.  The 3 sisters and I also ended up chatting for quite a long time after everyone else left us.

     For Christmas dinner, I tried using the sous vide to make prime ribs for us.  This turned out well and this was my first success cooking prime ribs at home.  Logan actually told me that he really liked the meat without I solicited the response.  We also added Christmas crackers to dinnertime, and had the opportunity to take some silly photos to wrap up this holiday. 

Here are the photos from this special day and the clips of us opening presents:

https://photos.google.com/album/AF1QipN95cM6XVbw9oD3PP8eaTsXOtljeDOnPU-bkkAa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc1p_XpHZNg&feature=youtu.be