It’s officially summer here in San José: the kids are out of school; Julie has taken the three of them to Nebraska (and back); and Julia is off to Camp Campbell this afternoon.

But the biggest news of the year so far is that we are somehow the parents of a high school student. This would have seemed inconceivable just a few years ago, but we’ve checked, and it appears to be true.

Even scarier, if we’ve done the math right, Joe will be taking the same step in just a couple years’ time. Of course, William won’t be done with eighth grade for another ten years, so we still have a long road ahead of us; we’re not done with packing lunches by a long shot.

It‘s Father’s Day today, and we’ve celebrated thus far by eating donuts for breakfast, after which Julie took the boys out for some Parks for Life activities. After lunch, I’ll be taking Julia to camp—she’s at the stage of her life in which being seen in public with a single parent is excruciatingly embarrassing, and being seen with her entire family would be utterly intolerable—and assuming my car has enough charge to make it back down the mountain, we’ll go out for a hike (more Parks for Life) and then have pizza this evening.

Speaking of Parks for Life, on one of the activities earlier this summer, William made an unexpected (and unwelcome) friend:

He doesn’t seem to have suffered any real adverse effects—there are no signs of a bull’s eye rash—and he was an complete champ about having it removed, but it was still something of a shock. For all the traipsing around in the woods we’ve done, going all the way back to my childhood, none of us had ever picked up a tick before. Never let it be said that we haven’t exposed to the kids to a variety of different experiences.

All that aside, we’ve posted a few more recent pictures this time around, from our trip to Nebraska for Christmas last year. We’ll be back to our regular schedule of six-year-old photos shortly, but I thought it might be nice to mix in a few of more recent vintage.

Gallery: Christmas 2017