We suddenly remembered about our ping pong table and took it out to play on Saturday.  Cole was here at our house playing with the boys, and all three boys were excited when we suggested ping pong.  Cole is actually quite good with it, so all five of us had fun taking turns playing against each other.

   Today Stuart and I decided to play an old board game Memoir44.  This was a two person game, so we played in teams; Stuart and Connor battled against Logan and I.  We had forgotten how fun this game was, and despite Logan and I lost at the end, the battling was entertaining.  I was almost late to head out to dinner with the girls as a result. 

    Logan had a fever, and so we kept him at home on Thursday.  Thursday and Friday were conference days for school, so the kids were supposed to have only 1/2 day of class anyway.  By Friday, Logan was getting better, but still quite congested and had a cough, so we kept him home again.  By 12:45pm on Friday, Stuart had to go pick Connor up early from the early out and they picked up the classwork for Logan from his teacher as well.  Since Logan was still a bit tired, he opted out from going to martial art and only Connor attended  After the class, Connor was happy to go to T4U on his own to buy drinks for them while Stuart and Logan watched him from the car. 

   Today on Saturday, as we were deciding if Logan would go to tennis lesson, the coach called to cancel as the courts were still wet.  This evening we were initially invited to one of the nurse practitioners’ house for a potluck dinner party.  I had planned to leave Logan and Stuart at home since Logan is still coughing. but as it turned out, the nurse practitioner’s son had an urgent medical issue and the party had to be postponed.  I am actually quite relieved to have a day with all events cancelled, so we could all rest up and be well again.

   The trail to our local hill Mt. Umumhum was recently opened up, and our neighbor Lisa and I had decided to give it a try last Sunday.  This trail was considered just moderate in difficulty, but it was with steep hills, so Stuart and Logan jokingly bet that I could not make it while Connor was hoping to go do this challenge with us.  Lisa and I set off to go at 9am on Sunday.  When we arrived there, we had a better understanding of the locations.  It turned out that there were two parking lots; the one we wanted to park for this 7.7 miles hike was small and was full.  We saw some incredible scenery from this higher point, but we ultimately decided that we did not want to wait for a parking spot.  So we drove back down to the lower parking lot to do a hike at a lower ground instead.  There was beautiful trees and nice trails, and we enjoyed a 7 miles hike with less of an incline.  We decided that we will have to make a better plan to try the other hike another day.

    One of Connor’s top front teeth became wiggly over a couple of month ago; it became so tilted that it threatened to come off.  Then it suddenly stopped moving further.  We had been encouraging Connor to wiggle it when he could, but this tilted tooth ended up staying around for weeks.  Finally right before the school spring photo day, we doubled our effort of wiggling it, the tooth finally came out.  This was such a big effort that Connor earned a bigger bill from the Tooth Fairy as a result.

    Connor chose Helen Keller to be the hero and did a report on her.  He worked hard with Stuart and did the write up.  He was comfortable rehearsing it to us.  On the day of presentation, Connor could not find the notecards he put in his backpack, so his presentation had to be moved to the next day.  After he finally did it, Connor told us later that he was nervous when he stood in front of the class, but once he started his speech, he enjoyed it.  He thought he did well.

     We were happy that we caught a few of the colder days in Denver and the boys enjoyed experiencing being outdoor while it was actively snowing.  When the storm hit in the afternoon on day 3, we hurried the kids outside to play.  It had been a long time since I had been in a snow storm; as long as we did not have to drive anywhere, it was quite awesome.  We just walked over to the local park and the boys had fun playing snowball fight.  One thing we could not do was making a snowman as the snow was too powdery and dry, but the boys were totally content throwing snow around.

    The next day, Dora took us to a bigger park where we could use her friend’s board to sled.  The little slop was plentiful for us to enjoy sliding down.  Connor was the one who enjoyed the most and the longest of this little excursion; he went up and down the slopes so many times.  It was a fun time.