We are headed into Girl Scout cookie season here in San José, which means that our weekends are going to be very fully booked very soon. With that in mind, I took some time this afternoon to go through our deep pile of un-reviewed photos to bring you an astonishing collection of pictures from… early 2012.

That’s right: these Obama-era pictures are pre-middle-school, pre-Brexit, and pre-William, going all the way back to kindergarten for Joe and second grade for Julia. Turns out, the older kids were pretty cute back in the day, and they hadn’t even learned to roll their eyes yet.

Speaking of eye-rolling middle schoolers, Joe has more or less settled in at Willow Glen Middle after a few early bumps in the road. Like Julia before him, he’s taking intermediate band with Ms. Lee and getting a kick out of her vibrant and somewhat unorthodox persona as a teacher. He tried out for jazz band over the summer and didn’t make it—officially, he was told that they didn’t need any more clarinetists—and that got him a little down for a while, but he has a springtime trip to Disneyland to look forward to, where the band will be participating in a contest. I don’t think Joe is as excited about it as Julia was—he’s not really into roller coasters and thrill rides—but being on the road for a few days with his friends and classmates should be an interesting life experience for him, as long as he doesn’t get left behind in a rest stop bathroom.

Speaking of Julia, she finally really seems to have a handle on middle school life, just in time for her to start high school next year. She’s even gone so far as to join two clubs: geography club, and a dungeons and dragons group. I thought about digging up some of my old AD&D character sheets from high school and college, but decided against it; I figure that hearing all about how I used to play the same game thirty years ago is the last thing she wants.

William is cruising through his last few months of preschool before he starts transitional kindergarten next year. Unfortunately, he’s taken to copying his older brother and decrying school as “boring”, but I think he secretly loves it. He will also be starting his first year of t-ball in a few weeks, so we’ll be back to spending Saturdays at the park after a year-long break.

Gallery: Early 2012.