I think we're in our third school week of the new year. Kai and Sora are doing well though we are getting emails everyday about some positive COVID case on campus. Agape closed for a week because of a positive case so Jad was home all of last week. We're lucky that one of us is always home so it didn't disrupt our routine too much but it was tiring to have him home all day. As noted last week, Jad loved it though. I think he's always had Kai and Sora around and rarely gets to be home or with us without them so this was a big treat for him. We also tried to take advantage and take him out to a few things that Kai and Sora used to get to do when they were younger and we had more bandwidth for like Emma Prusch Farm and the playground.
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Feeding some chickens at Emma Prusch. He
had a blast :) |
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| At the library playground |
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While there, they saw Sora and Wally at Noble.
They look like they are in jail :) |
After two weeks, we were itching to get back together with our neighbors so we did an outdoor dinner at our house. It was really nice to see everyone again and we were kind of good about wearing masks some of the time.
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| RCC campout complete with bonfire! |
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| Roasting marshmallows on an open fire.. |
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Eventually the kids did make it into our house .. it's nice
to have things more normal again |
The Nintendo Switch has been mostly successful. It has given us a bit more leverage especially for the Kai and Sora as timeouts are less useful for them. They are pretty happy playing Smash Bros for now, but we'll probably have to get more games soon. It's also nice that it's so easily portable..
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Getting Gung Gung and Uncle David into
the brawl too! |
We had 3 days off this past weekend for MLK birthday and we hung out with the Shaws. Ansel brought the kids and we piled into the minivan for a day trip to Santa Cruz.
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There are some advantages to the minivan, though
it was still a tight squeeze with all the car seats |
Our first stop was the Mystery Spot! We had always heard of it and Amy had been as a teenager but it was pretty cool. Smaller than I thought, more of just a shack rather than a whole house, but it was really cool to see all the weird gravity distortions with us standing sideways, balls rolling and water flowing uphill. Apparently, it's called a Gravity Hill and they are combination of optical illusions to fool your brain. Pretty cool and the kids had a blast.
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Looking good, Kai.. I like how Jad is trying
to find his footing in the background too |
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| Sideways pull-up |
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Our funny guy guide Henry telling jokes
Jungle Cruise style |
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| Free bumper stickers for everyone! |
Afterwards, we went for a quick hike in the mountains. The kids are much faster than I am already and I'm very proud of them. Gotta get my own cardiovascular health up. I am trying to incorporate more exercises into my clinic days. That's a couple of days a week of some exercise at least.
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| Wandering around the mountains |
Our third stop was the beach. At first we weren't sure if we had the energy but Amy decided to push for it and it was great! We went to Natural Bridges in Santa Cruz and it was a warm day. The kids had a great time running around and digging up sand crabs.
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| Just another winter day in California |
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| Warmer than we thought it would be |
We finished up the day with dinner back at the Shaw Shack where Yukari could join us. All in all, an excellent day with friends, new experiences, kids hanging out, physical activity and good catching up!
Lastly, Joe made it to Chiang-Mai finally after a long flight and stopping in Bangkok for COVID testing. My mom isn't doing well. Her alzheimer's is progressing and she's having trouble walking and swallowing now, mostly just eating soft foods. It will likely slowly get worse from here so we're going to try to go visit her in April. There are some sad feelings but they are compartmentalized from the day to day. What can we do? It's life.
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| She's happy here with Joe |
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