It‘s been a busy fall here in San José, with enough happening that there have been scant opportunities for fun diversions like going through photos. At times, it seems that we are barely keeping our heads above water, but the house hasn’t been condemned yet, so I suppose things can’t be that bad.

The older kids both have busy schedules this semester. Joe powered through a full year’s worth of math over the summer so that he could skip ahead to Integrated Math 2 this year, which hopefully will challenge him a bit more than his math class last year. He’s also started Spanish, which presents its own set of challenges and definitely takes him out of his usual comfort zone. I think this is a good thing, as Joe doesn’t always respond with enthusiasm to things that don’t come to him without effort.

Julia is taking AP World history, which seems to be an unstoppable homework-generating machine. She’s also acting in a couple plays this fall (to be fair, she only has a single line in one of them), so her afternoons and evenings are as full as ever. She can be a little grumpy at times when she’s feeling stressed, but there’s no question that she works extremely hard.

Their school pictures came in last week. I’ve included small copies below, but you can find the full-size versions in their respective galleries.