Monthly Archives: November 2021

Baseball, Camping, and Spring

Posted on by

This week, we have a selection of pictures from way back in the spring of 2014, when William was less than a year old, and Joe was just about four months younger than William is now.

The gallery includes a few photos from Joe’s campout at YMCA Camp Jones Gulch, one of a few locations we visited for cabin camping during Joe’s time in Adventure Guides through the Y. When William entered kindergarten, I looked into signing up with him—I thought it would be a hoot if he could join the same circle, the Grizzlies, that Joe had been a part of, but I was a little disappointed to find that the YMCA no longers offers the Adventure Guides program in our area. I’m more than a little curious about what happened to the paraphernalia associated with our group: we had a carved table standard in the shape of a bear; a big drum; and a larger standard we used in parades, festooned with ribbons the kids won in competitions. Hopefully it’s not in a landfill.

The set also features some pictures of Joe’s first (and only) season at the Farm level in Little League. They realigned the age brackets after the season so that he was moved up to Minors the next year, which was a bit of a shame, as he could have used a bit more seasoning in Farm, where coaches pitch, before moving up to a kid-pitch league. Coincidentally, this was the same level at which William played this year. Time flies.

My brother Bill came to visit in this timeframe; it may have been the first time he met his namesake nephew. William made a positive first impression, as is his wont. Even at his six months, his personality shone like a beacon.

Gallery: Baseball, Camping, and Sprng

Fall 2020

Posted on by

Now that we’re finished posting pictures from our year-long remodel project, we can return to our slow-motion processing of regular old family snapshots. In that vein, here’s a large-ish collection of photos from the fall of last year.

In this timeframe, we’d been cooped up due to the COVID-19 pandemic1 for more than six months. And, because we had moved out of our house and into the rental, we were feeling a bit restless and untethered. With that in mind, we set out to to try some new activities, just to keep busy. We went on a few hikes, including a pleasant walk on the Los Gatos Creek Trail on Thanksgiving; we went for a scenic train ride on a narrow-gauge rail line in Felton; and Julie, William, and I took a road trip up to Alameda to visit a drive-through Dinosaur Adventure exhibit.

The trip to Felton was a hoot—and a little poignant—because it took us back to the railway where we took Julia for a Day Out with Thomas all the way back in 2007. It’s hard to fathom how much time has passed since then; sometimes, it feels like it was just a few weeks ago. To commemorate the occasion, we tried to take a comparion shot, but toddler Julia was a bit more interested in having her picture taken than the teenage version.

The set also includes a number of photos that highlight our year of distance learning. There are a few shots of William in class in Willville—he was often cold in the morning, so he loved to wear the Grandma Wong’s handmade sweaters—and a fun series of pictures of Felix waiting somewhat impatiently outside Julia’s door while she took an exam.

Finally, the album also covers Julia’s and William’s birthdays. Because kids weren’t really able to see their friends socially at the time, the trendy thing to do was rent yard signs to make their special days feel more festive. The installers do their work under cover of darkness the night before—you have to make sure to water the lawn so that the ground is soft enough to allow the signs to be staked down—and haul them away the next evening. You can even customize the iconography in the displays to match the recipient’s interests. We had done this for Joe over the summer, so Will (naturally) and Julia (perhaps a bit surprisingly) were both looking forward seeing to their signs. It gave them something new and different to anticipate amidst the blur of days blending together at home.

Between the pandemic and the move, it was a strange and occasionally surreal time for us all. The one clear upside was that I got to see a lot more of everyone, both after work, when we sat down for dinner together, and throughout the day: I got to watch William at the start of school every morning as I ate breakfast and chat with Joe and Julia when they took breaks for lunch. It’s better for everyone now that they’re back in school in-person, but I do miss having them around.

Gallery: Fall 2020

  1. Still going strong, with more than five million deaths worldwide and more than 750,000 here in the U.S.↩

School Pictures 2021

Posted on by
Reply

Just as school is back to a more normal routine this year, school pictures are more or less back on a normal schedule. This means we have them now, rather than at the end of the year, and that we have proper, posed portraits for all three kids instead of the snapshots we cobbled together at home last spring that left me thinking about dropping a not insignificant amount of money on light boxes.

William and Joe’s pictures are more or less your bog-standard school photos, and they did a pretty decent job of capturing each kid’s personality.

William - Second Grade

Joseph - Tenth Grade

William’s picture doesn’t convey the unbridled glee you can see in some of his earlier portraits, but you can still pick up on his carefree and slightly silly bearing. Joe seems a little more self-conscious and guarded in his picture, but that’s who he is in real life, too.

Because Julia’s a senior, we took her in for a longer photo shoot way back in July; we’ve only now gotten around to picking the shots that we liked best from the proofs the photographer sent us a few months ago.

Julia - Twelfth Grade

Julia - Cap and Gown

Julia - Cap, Gown, and Sign

The longer session allowed the photographer to work with Julia to create shots that are a joyful and fun celebration of her senior year. But they also brought a startling (to me) realization: these are the last school pictures she will ever take. It seems like only yesterday that we posted her kindergarten picture. I expect this is just one of many “lasts” we’ll face over the next few months, along with a few firsts.

For example: she submitted her very first college application yesterday afternoon, after a great deal of consternation and worry. With one under her belt, our hope is that she’ll find the remaining applications comparatively less intimidating and easier to face.

The photos embedded in this post are small, low-resolution copies of the kids’ portraits. You can find the full-size pictures in the dedicated galleries.

Galleries: Julia, Joseph, William