Category Archives: Basketball

Solid Food and Grandparents in Spring

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This album takes us all the way back to the spring of 2014, when William was a squawky infant; Joe was a carefree second grader; and Julia, our big kid, was all of nine years old.

The photos here cover a lot of ground, including a visit from Grandma and Grandpa Wong, baseball and basketball games for Joe, an overnight trip to the California Academy of Sciences, Julia oozing personality, and a few work-related pictures to top things off.

William was in a developmental phase in which he was getting used to eating solid food and rolling over, but he wasn’t yet crawling or saying even simple words. Those limitations didn’t stop his effervescent personality from shining through, though: even at this age, he was a joyful kid who loved interacting with other people, and that’s plainly evident in these images.

Joe had a busy March: basketball season was wrapping up, and his lone season of Little League at the Farm level was just getting started. A highlight of the month was an overnight stay at the California Academy of Sciences with his Adventure Guides circle, the Grizzlies. We had the run of the museum for the evening and slept in the darkened aquarium section, with the quiet murmur of the water pumps to lull us to sleep.

The gallery also contains a smattering of work-related photos. In March 2014, Airtime had just completed the acquisition of vLine, the startup I’d joined the previous July. To foster a greater sense of cohesion between the original Airtime team, which was based in New York City, and the vLine folks from California, the company set up an all-hands offsite in Miami. We stayed in a very nice hotel and worked through strategy discussions and team-building activities. I was especially taken by the outdoor bathtub on my patio, though I never got a chance to use it.

There are also a few pictures of our first post-acquisition office, which we rented for a few months while our more permanent home was being renovated. It was basically a long walk-in closet with doors on both ends and no exterior windows. We only spent a few months there but it was a startup experience to remember.

Gallery: Solid Food and Grandparents in Spring

Early 2012

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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.

Early 2011

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We expect to have more recent pictures to post in a few days, but I wanted to kick things off with a set of photos we’ve had lying around since early 2011.

Julia received a perfect score on her science fair project, which I think was well–deserved considering the amount of effort she put into it. As a reward, we took the kids to the Winchester Mystery House for the first time and followed that up with dinner out and ice cream. I had the honor and privilege of carrying William through the tour, because he decided he didn’t want to ride in the Baby Bjorn, and most of the time he made it quite clear that he really wanted Julie to hold him, but everyone made it through intact.

Both kids have been spending a great deal of time learning to program at /code over the past few weeks—possibly in part because I (perhaps foolishly) decreed that time spent there wouldn’t count against their small daily allotment of screen time. The tutorials offered there are remarkable in terms of their accessibility and breadth, and Julia and Joe have picked up quite a bit very quickly. I’m hoping I can start bringing my work home and have them do it for me.

Gallery: Early 2011.