Category Archives: Chicago

Summer Camp & Chicago 2015

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To celebrate the Fourth of July this year, we’re bringing you a set of pictures from around this time last year. These photos date back to last July and August, when I took the kids to Chicago to visit Grandma and Grandpa Wong (while Julie went to Nebraska to see her mother), and include a number of pictures taken from the older kids’ trip to Camp Campbell.

While we were in Chicago, we drove down to Wheaton, where I lived until about the age of seven, to see Cosley Zoo, a small park and zoo run by the Wheaton park district that my mother took my brother and me to when we were little. It was incredibly hot the day we visited—our California-born kids weren’t quite ready for the heat and humidity of Chicago in July—but it was still a treat to take them there thirty-plus years later.

This set is noteworthy for the fact that a number of the pictures were taken by Julia and Joe: many of the animal shots were capture by Julia, who insisted that I not leave them out; I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decide which photos originated with Joe.

In more recent news, Julia is at Camp Campbell again as I write this post. This year, for the first time, she’s staying for a two-week session, which she’s a little more than halfway through today. Joe elected not to go this year, after having a somewhat less-than-great experience last year. This has more to do with the quirks of Joe’s personality than it does the camp or counselors, for many of the same reasons he’s taking a little hiatus from organized sports: it doesn’t seem to make sense to put him in a position in which he’s likely to fail.

In about two-and-a-half weeks, we’re taking a road trip down to Anaheim, where we’ll be meeting up with my parents and visiting Disneyland for a few days. We have quite a bit of packing and preparation to take care of—all the things I‘ve read online strongly recommend that you plan your Disneyland trip with military levels of precision—but will try to get back on track with respect to posting pictures regardless.

Gallery: Summer Camp & Chicago 2015.

Chicago 2011

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Here’s a retro treat: pictures from our 2011 trip to Chicago. On this visit, we took the kids up to Necedah, where my grandfather used to have a house on a bend in the Yellow River, and where my maternal grandparents are buried. It was my first trip up there in years, and the first ever for Julia and Joe.

My memory is a bit fuzzy—it was nearly five years ago, after all—but I seem to recall that the kids handled the long car ride pretty well, though we broke up the trip a bit by staying overnight at a motel in the Wisconsin Dells, where everyone could relax and swim. Julia enjoyed sliding down the little waterslide at the pool, but Joe was a bit more fearful, choosing instead to dog paddle alongside Julie the whole time.

While we were there, we took a boat tour on the Wisconsin river to see the Dells itself, a gorge containing cliffs and rock formations carved out of sandstone when Glacial Lake Wisconsin drained. Many of the rock formations had names, some of which I was even able to recall with the help of Google.

Gallery: Chicago 2011.

Christmas 2012

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Unforeseen circumstances have prevented us from posting as often as we’d resolved to at the start of the year, but here’s a token effort: pictures from the 2012 Christmas season.

The festivities started off with the annual Girl Scout Father-Daughter dance. We had never attended in the past, but Julia’s troop was hosting this year and Julie was helping with setup (along with all the other moms), so it would have been a bit anti-social not to attend, even by my high standards. The dance was Western themed, so the months and months of junior high P.E. I spent doing square dancing finally paid off, just like Mr. Lansdown always said they would.

We spent the holidays themselves in Chicago with my family, where the kids were overwhelmed by Santa’s largesse. As excited as the kids were by Christmas morning, Julie and I were equally passionate about the prospect of getting everything home. In as sure a sign that miracles do happen as I’ve ever seen, everything made it back to California in one piece, including our collective sanity.

While we were in Illinois, we had a number of adventures. In addition to spending some quality time with the Shidle and Sass families—probably more than they bargained for—we visited my grandparents and spent Christmas evening with my Uncle Jack and Aunt Mary and my cousins Nick and Caitlin. Later in the week, we saw the Chicago (well, Rosemont) version of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, starring the Rockettes. I was a little worried that it might be a bit beyond the kids’ ken, but it ended up being right up their alley.

At the tail end our trip, we paid a final visit to the Rolling Meadows Gino’s East, which is evidently being torn down to make room for a much-needed Panera. Aside from the fact that we love the pizza—in particular, I’m a fan of the sausage patty that covers the entire pie—its closure is depressing because, as Julie reminded me, it was the site of our first actual date. Yes, I took my future wife out for pizza on our first date. We also saw Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Has there ever been a more auspicious beginning?

At least our first date wasn’t at One Schaumburg Place.

More on the unforeseen circumstances in a bit.

Summer 2012 – Video

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In the wake of last week’s batch of pictures from the summer, we’ve put together a short video covering the same timeframe.

Julie also reminded me of an anecdote I forgot to mention last time. In the registration paperwork for Julia’s week at Camp Campbell, there was a section in which Julia could express her preferences and tastes on a number of subjects. One question asked what kind of counselor she would like. Characteristically, Julia wrote, “I would like a counselor who is not too strict.”

As the girls were unpacking after our arrival at camp, the counselors chatted amiably with everyone, trying to put the campers and their parents at ease. They asked Julia what she had put down on the form, and when she answered—a bit sheepishly—they knew exactly who she was. Julia can make an impression even before she makes an appearance.

Summer 2012

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Summer ended three months ago, and we finally have the pictures to show for it.

The kids spent most of the summer in a variety of different week-long camps run by the local YMCA: Lego Robotics, Delicious Science and Cooking, Swimming, etc. However, the big one, for Julia at least, was Camp Campbell: an actual overnight camp. Camp Campbell is where Joe and I camped with the Adventure Guides last spring, so we’d been looking for an opportunity to give Julia a chance to try it as well (though Julia ended up sleeping in much nicer accommodations than Joe and I had). The Y offers a shortened, three-day session for younger kids, and we timed it so that Julia could go at the same time as Phoebe and Zoe Dueltgen, two of her oldest friends. Somehow, Julia, her cabin-mates, the counsellors and the campground all emerged more or less unscathed, and Julia is looking forward to going back for a full week next year.

Toward the end of July—more or less the end of summer as well, because of the way the school year is set up—we traveled to Chicago to visit family and experience humidity. We succeeded in accomplishing the former goal, but utterly failed in the latter: the Chicago area (as well as much of the midwest) spent the year in the throes of a punishing drought. It was drier there—and the grass deader—than I ever remember it being.

The heat didn’t deter the kids, of course. My Aunt Mary and Uncle Jack graciously invited us over to their place to celebrate my cousin Caitlin’s 18th birthday and to swim in their pool. Julia was happy to show off the progress she’d made at swim camp over the summer, but Joe was still not 100% comfortable in the water, as the photos show.

We also made a trip to Donley’s Wild West Town, out in Union, Illinois. Donley’s has been around since 1974, but somehow it escaped our attention until this year; thus, it was new to all of us. It’s a quaint little amusement park with a few low-key rides, games and activities, pony rides and an action-packed Wild West Show that runs thrice daily.

Julia and Joe had a great time at the park, though Julia had a bit of a run-in with a fractious pair of ponies. She was the first person to line up for a pony ride in the morning, and the first pony she rode on got a little antsy toward the end of the ride. And by “antsy” I mean that the pony actively tried to throw her. To her credit, Julia was calm and collected (or merely paralyzed with fear) throughout. She even hung around to give it another shot on a different pony after Joe took his turn, but that pony also decided that it wasn’t particularly interested in carrying her—so maybe it was Julia after all. In any event, it appears that we don’t have to worry about shelling out for lessons in equestrianism any time soon.

Joe’s favorite activity at Donley’s, by far, was the canoe ride, in which riders float slowly around a circuit filled with suspiciously blue water, propelled by a current generated by unseen forces. Given a chance, Joe would likely have ridden the canoes all day long: it’s an open question as to whether he would have succumbed to sunstroke before poisoning himself by dragging his hands in the unnaturally azure waters and sucking his thumb.

Naturally, we visited my grandparents while we were in town. We were lucky to be there at the same time as my cousin Leslie, whom I hadn’t seen in many years—a bit ironically, as she lives closer to us than any of my other relatives, in Orangevale, California. In looking at the pictures from this part of the trip, you may notice that one appears to have been very heavily processed. This wasn’t an effort on my part to show off my artistic sensibilities; rather, it was the one shot that caught everyone with somewhat reasonable facial expressions, and it came out of the camera very underexposed. I did my best to salvage it with my limited skills.

There is one other photo for which I took a pretty aggressive approach to editing, but I’ll leave that one for you to identify.

On the subject of photographing uncooperative subjects, the last sequence of pictures in the set was taken by my mother on the deck in our backyard in a somewhat futile effort to get a standard, nice portrait of both kids together. I’m not sure any of them really qualify by that measure, but taken as a whole, I felt they captured the essence of the kids’ personalities and their relationship, at least on that particular day.

Transitions—Beds and Bikes

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We’re back from our Christmas trip to Chicago, and although everyone had a fantastic time, the kids were definitely happy to see their little yellow house again. It didn’t help that the torrential rain and mudslides that slammed Southern California while we were gone dominated the news, even in Illinois. As a result, Julia asked whether San Jose was in the southern part of California or the northern part at least five or six times during our trip. Of course, once we got home, Julia spontaneously burst into tears more than once because, she insisted, she missed Grandma and Grandpa.

Santa delivered most of the kids’ gifts in Chicago—the children were evidently better behaved last year than I would have given them credit for—leaving us with suitcases and boxes full of stuff to take home. We mitigated the pain somewhat by shipping a few boxes via FedEx, making things a lot more convenient at the airport and providing us with the satisfaction of not having to give extra money to the airline.

On the topic of luggage and travel-related hassles, we took a big step with Julia just before the trip by moving her out of her bulky and massive convertible car seat and into a belt-positioning booster seat. She’s actually the last kid in her peer group that I know of to make this transition: the car seat was a complete bear to travel with and made it next to impossible for her to secure herself in the car, but it felt safer and seemed to offer greater support. Julia finally outgrew the seat’s height limit, however, so we were forced to make a change. On the plus side, the new seat is much easier to deal with when we travel, because it’s about half the size and weight of the old one and doesn’t require a complicated installation process.

We’ll have pictures from Christmas and the rest of our trip shortly, but first we wanted to post some snapshots taken after we returned home. In addition to the gifts Santa delivered to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Chicago, Julie and I reserved two big-ticket items to give to the kids here in California: a two-wheeled bike for Joe and a big-girl bed for Julia.

The bike was something of a no-brainer: Joe is already older than Julia was when she got hers, and when they have Wheels Day at school, he’s usually the only one who shows up with a tricycle. Granted, he was a little later than most to get the hang of actually moving under his own power on a trike, but the timing felt right.

He was initially thrilled when he saw the bike: he let out a delighted exclamation that could be heard up and down the block. He remained enthused he started to climb on, but his excitement began to turn to worry once he realized that the bike was significantly less stable, even with training wheels, than what he was used to. We convinced him to pedal slowly up and down the block a little ways, but in typical Joe fashion, he wasn’t quite sure he liked it, and he wouldn’t let Julie leave his side. In contrast, Julia was zipping around the block almost on her own the very first time she got on her bike. Afterward, we lowered the seat a couple inches to make it easier for him to pedal, and we’ll give it another shot this afternoon.

Likewise, Julia’s move to a real bed was probably overdue. She had been in a a daybed that we’d converted from her crib since Joe was born, and she was getting to the point where she couldn’t stretch out comfortably. We knew she needed to move up, but we weren’t sure how to approach the matter. The obvious answer was to get a new twin mattress and a separate headboard, but we were a little apprehensive about the expense. We looked at more exotic choices, like elevated beds with desks beneath them—she’s going to need somewhere to do her homework eventually—but they were even worse from a cost perspective.

Finally, we remembered that Julia’s crib / daybed could also be converted to a full-size bed using a kit sold by the manufacturer. And, as it happens, we’ve had a full-size mattress and box spring taking up space in our garage ever since we converted the guest bedroom into an office. We decided to try attaching the crib headboard and footboard to the rails we already had and, lo and behold, it worked. We still need to tweak things to make the bed as stable as we’d like, but it looks as though we’ve found a workable, low-cost solution.

This strategy isn’t without compromises: because the bed takes a full-size mattress instead of a twin, it eats a lot of space in the kids’ bedroom, making getting around a challenge. And, when the time comes for Joe to get a bed, he might end up a little disappointed if he only gets a twin. That said, we saved some money and freed up a not insignificant amount of room in the garage.

If all that wasn’t enough excitement for one week, Julia at last hit a milestone that she’s been looking forward to—and I’ve been dreading—for more than a year: her bottom front teeth are loose. She’s been talking about loose teeth ever since her friends started losing theirs last year in kindergarten, but hers remained stubbornly fixed even as younger and younger friends started getting visits from the Tooth Fairy. At her last checkup, the dentist said there was nothing to worry about: her adult teeth were perfectly fine, but just a bit slow to develop; she thought Julia might be seven before there was much progress on that front.

It was a bit of a surprise, then, when I came home from work on Thursday and heard the news from a gleeful daughter: one of her teeth was wiggling. Friday brought a bit of confusion, as Julia couldn’t remember which tooth had been loose the night before. We double-checked, and found that both front teeth were visibly wobbly. I suspect this might be due to the somewhat idiosyncratic placement of these teeth—when they first came in, I started calling Julia El Chupacabra, until Julie made me stop—so one adult tooth might be killing two birds with one stone. We’ll find out in a few weeks whether we need to start looking into a second mortgage to pay for braces.

We’ve posted pictures of the bike and bed and should have more, including photos from Chicago and a couple albums from the archives, ready to go soon.

Update, 7/10/2011: As loyal readers of this site know, the loose teeth referenced above were a false alarm. Six months later, Julia’s front teeth are still firmly ensconced in her gums, though one of them is finally starting to show signs of being ready to get moving.

Vacation and Bike News

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After a long, hectic summer, there’s nothing like a two-week family vacation to slow things down and get everyone into a relaxed frame of mind heading into the school year, right? OK, maybe not, but we tried. And we have pictures.

Things got off to a rollicking start when we found that we didn’t have any hot water in the master bathroom the morning of the trip. The hot water heater was completely kaput, and to add to the excitement, the drain in the front bathroom was sufficiently stuck that taking more than a five-minute shower would result in a flood.

Those minor difficulties overcome—or at least deferred—we started out with a week-long stop in Chicago, where we visited my parents and went to my 20-year high school reunion. In addition to the reunion proper, there were Alumni Weekend activities, complete with kids’ play area, at IMSA on Saturday. Julia and Joseph were surprisingly unimpressed with the place where Daddy spent his formative years, though Joe did get a big kick out of the fact that there was an elevator in the school building: I probably rode it more times that afternoon than I had the entire three years I attended school there. The kids also insisted on climbing on and around the various pieces of art installed on the school grounds, proving that some things transcend generations.

While we were in Elk Grove, the kids became fascinated by the bike trails in and around the forest preserve and requested that we go for a walk in the “deep, dark forest.” Mom and I obliged them, though in hindsight, it would have been a better idea to drive into the forest preserve and walk from there, rather than haul both of them to and from the house. If it weren’t for my old wagon, which we uncovered in the garage, we never would have made it.

From Chicago, we headed to Nebraska for Julie’s reunion, which was conveniently scheduled for the weekend after mine—it helped that Julie was the one doing the organizing for her class. Everyone was very excited to see Grandma Flack’s new house in Norfolk, and the kids were especially looking forward to sleeping in the basement. Joe only fell down the stairs once, so I considered that leg of the trip to be a rousing success.

I left for home the day after the reunion, while Julie and the kids stayed in Nebraska for a few additional days, which gave me a bit of time to get caught up on work and arrange for a plumber to come by and fix our bathing problems.

Other than the trip, the other big news is that Julia has finally gotten the hang of riding her bike. The weekend before we left, she was able to make it all the way around the block, stopping only once. She still needs a little help getting going from a full stop, but she’s well on her way to achieving a new level of independence and mobility. I only hope that the world is ready.