I have been under the weather for the past few days; fortunately we did not have any major plans during this off school week.  The boys are enjoying having more free time at home as well.  We just did some random things here and there.

    On President’s Day Monday Vrinda and Rohan came over to try the new brunch place by our house with us; the boys ate and played together at the restaurant.  Afterward Rohan stayed to play for the boys for awhile.  Another day Lisa and I attempted to coordinate to take the boys out for a short hike, but at the end, we only managed to get the boys on their schoolers and headed to school.  Lisa and I continued to walk around the playground while they played by the structure.

    I took the boys to their martial arts classes this week and I could see all the moves they have been learning.  The testing week is next week, and now at their sophomore level, new belt is not guaranteed.  Hope they will do ok next week.

   The boys also had another tennis lesson with the coach; despite not feeling too well, Stuart and I played 1/2 hour together.  I also had a chance to watch the boys practice.  The coach is demanding on their postures and the boys did their best to do what he asked.

    On Wednesday and Thursday, I had to work.  The boys were on their own on Wednesday while Stuart worked, and Stuart could finally spend some time with them on Thursday.  They went to some stores and did some errand, and enjoyed a lunch of the boys’ choice too.

   The boys and I decided to watch a movie on Friday and they chose to watch Lego Movie 2.  We love the new seating in our local theaters; I almost caught a nice nap during the movie.  In the evening Stuart and I decided to put on an old classic Oliver to watch at home.  Despite the songs were long, the boys liked the movie.  Now they enjoyed humming some of the catchy songs from the movie.

    Stuart and I were going through some younger toys to pass on to Kathy’s nephew.  We put together some train and car sets to ensure they were functioning before we packed them up.  It was a nice spring cleaning for our game room.  As I was packing up the dinosaur box, there were few other toys left underneath all the big dinosaurs.  Then I spotted him, and I almost could not believe my eyes.  Logan had been periodically asked about Teddy’s whereabout and he told us that he missed him.  Teddy turned out to be left on the bottom of the dinosaur box for probably the past few years.  Logan was thrilled with this discovery and Teddy was on Logan’s side the rest of the day.

   Connor was invited to Dylan’s birthday on Saturday, and it was to start at 11:30am and all the way as a sleepover to the next morning.  Since we don’t really know the family and the party was so long already, Stuart and I decided to pick Connor back up before bedtime.  Connor was ok with that idea and Dylan’s mom was fine too.  After we dropped Connor off, their day itinerary was lunch, bowling, playing at home, trampoline jumping and frozen yogurt before going home for the night.

    It seemed to be quieter just the three of us the rest of the day.  We did some shopping together, then Logan played some video game. We went for a walk and played Just Dance for awhile.  Logan chose to have pizza for dinner and we watched a home movie too.  We also snuggled together to read for a bit at bedtime as well.  Logan seemed to enjoy getting some solo attention.

     I had gotten updates from the mom periodically; they were behind schedule and I ended up picking Connor back up at 10:30pm.  They had a fun day together; Connor mentioned a couple of not so good moments; one was that there was a brief encounter with a bigger teenager not being nice to them at the trampoline park, and that they ran out of them to go for frozen yogurt.  Connor was hungry when he was home and had a big snack quickly before ending the late night for him.

   Connor went to another one of the workshop last Sunday.  This time they talked about DNA and they made one too.  Connor said this project was very hard to put together; he practically worked on it standing up for 1.5 hour.  He told me that his legs were tired when I picked him up, and they were able to have a snack only at the end.  He was very proud of his work, and could not wait to show it to Stuart.

    I helped out at Connor’s science lab on Friday.  Their class was learning about dams.  At the experiment, they were comparing how quickly the water sift through different construction materials, and the kids had to use a timer.  They all had fun racing against the other table groups.

   On Monday, it was Logan’s turn for my volunteering.  Their class learned about a chemical reaction.  They combined yeast with sugar and added warm water to it, and each table had a control group.  It was interesting to see how much carbon dioxide was made in the flask with the sugar.  The top from Logan and Lucas’ flask actually popped out in the middle of the class and gave the class a little laugh.  At the end, the kids got to smell their experiment solutions, and many of them did not care about the little alcohol smell from it.

    We cleaned up the house a bit over the weekend.  On Monday, New Year eve,

we went out for Chinese food after work.  The boys had great appetite, we cleaned all the plates and enjoyed the meal.  The one thing the boys looked forward to the most on CNY is the red envelope, and they were happy when we gave them one on Tuesday.