To celebrate the Fourth of July this year, we’re bringing you a set of pictures from around this time last year. These photos date back to last July and August, when I took the kids to Chicago to visit Grandma and Grandpa Wong (while Julie went to Nebraska to see her mother), and include a number of pictures taken from the older kids’ trip to Camp Campbell.

While we were in Chicago, we drove down to Wheaton, where I lived until about the age of seven, to see Cosley Zoo, a small park and zoo run by the Wheaton park district that my mother took my brother and me to when we were little. It was incredibly hot the day we visited—our California-born kids weren’t quite ready for the heat and humidity of Chicago in July—but it was still a treat to take them there thirty-plus years later.

This set is noteworthy for the fact that a number of the pictures were taken by Julia and Joe: many of the animal shots were capture by Julia, who insisted that I not leave them out; I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which photos originated with Joe.

In more recent news, Julia is at Camp Campbell again as I write this post. This year, for the first time, she’s staying for a two-week session, which she’s a little more than halfway through today. Joe elected not to go this year, after having a somewhat less-than-great experience last year. This has more to do with the quirks of Joe’s personality than it does the camp or counselors, for many of the same reasons he’s taking a little hiatus from organized sports: it doesn’t seem to make sense to put him in a position in which he’s likely to fail.

In about two-and-a-half weeks, we’re taking a road trip down to Anaheim, where we’ll be meeting up with my parents and visiting Disneyland for a few days. We have quite a bit of packing and preparation to take care of—all the things I‘ve read online strongly recommend that you plan your Disneyland trip with military levels of precision—but will try to get back on track with respect to posting pictures regardless.

Gallery: Summer Camp & Chicago 2015.