Category Archives: Grandparents

A Field Trip, Thanksgiving, and Gingerbread Houses

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This update, A Field Trip, Thanksgiving, and Gingerbread Houses, covers the brief-but-busy interlude between Halloween and the start of the Christmas season. The set kicks off with a few photos of William on a field trip to the Marine Science Institute in Redwood City, or MSI, where the Booksin fourth graders were presented with the opportunity to learn about the incredible variety of marine life in the San Francisco Bay. This field trip is a longtime staple for Booksin students—more on that in an update to come—and it’s a treat to see these pictures if only because William has been on relatively few field trips in his time in school, thanks largely to Covid, which put the kibosh on class outings for a couple of years

MSI aside, William had very a busy month. In the space of eight days, he attended a bowling birthday party for his friend Henry; he went bowling again for his friend Caeden’s birthday; he learned to solve his Rubik’s cube for the first time; and he played mini golf at his friend Julian’s birthday party. His social calendar is vastly more full than mine.

Most of the gallery is taken up by pictures from the weekend of Thanksgiving. Julie’s Mom joined us for Thanksgiving dinner, of course, and the holiday meal was a resounding success. We were fortunate to have one of the best turkeys we’ve had in recent years, and we even finished the green bean casserole that day, neatly avoiding the challenge of reheating that dish without making the onions soggy. For dessert, William worked up the nerve to try pumpkin pie for the first time; as a result of his experiment, he decided that he’s a big fan of whipped cream.

That Sunday, we decorated gingerbread houses at the eleventh annual Gingerbread Decorating Party at the San José Woman’s Club. We’ve attended this event since Julia was little, and the comfortable routine is familiar and uncomplicated. The basic outlines have remained unchanged for years: you pick up your gingerbread house; put together a plate of candy and snacks with which to decorate it; and enjoy hot chocolate, apple cider, and cheese and crackers as you festoon your creation. William always looks forward to entering his house in the contest at the end of the party—he’ll win one of these years—but this year we had to duck out early due to another commitment.

The set concludes with a few snapshots from a brief ceremony UPA held to honor students who did well in the National Merit Scholarship competition. Joe was part of the largest group of honorees, the Commended Students. He was a little reluctant to attend, perhaps because he was dissatisfied with his performance on the PSAT, but he was ultimately convinced to go, which gave him an opportunity to goof off with his friend Caitlin, who was also recognized that evening.

Finally, I snuck in a picture of a pizza I made, because I think I might be finally starting to get the hang of our pizza oven.

Gallery: A Field Trip, Thanksgiving, and Gingerbread Houses

Christmas 2022

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Christmas last year was busy, and the frenetic pace has continued through the early months of 2023—hence the relative lateness of this collection of holiday photos.

For us, the holiday season started just after Thanksgiving, when we visited the San José Women’s Club to decorate gingerbread houses, as has been our tradition for the last several years. We even enticed Julia to come along, along with Grandma Flack, who was spending her first Christmas here in California.

Around mid-month, we decorated the first of our two Christmas trees for the year. This one was our own family tree, using the ornaments and lights we’ve accumulated over the years. It’s starting to get a little wobbly after about twenty-four years of service, but it survived another holiday; we’ll see how it’s doing next December.

We decorated the second tree on Christmas Eve using Grandma Flack’s family ornaments. This was our first natural tree in many years, but since Julie was planning to stay home through the holidays—more on that in a bit—it seemed like a good year to have one. With our tree in the family room and the Flack tree in the living room, our house felt very festive indeed.

As pandemic restrictions have eased, certain customs have returned after a prolonged absence. Among them: in-person, indoor musical performances at school. We had two of these this year. The first was a concert of holiday songs put on by William’s class. As you can see in the pictures, Will, always happy to put on a show, wore his favorite winter gloves, which feature puppets on the end of each finger.

The second performance was a band concert at UPA. For this show, Joe picked up a new instrument, the soprano saxophone, to play certain parts, though his primary focus remains the clarinet. He and his small ensemble also played a pair of pieces to bookend the main body of the concert; they spent many hours practicing after school last fall to get their songs down.

The album contains several videos along with the usual selection of photos. William’s concert in particular had a very specific resonance: the last time we were on Booksin’s campus for a concert was March 6, 2020, just a week before our county shut down for the pandemic. I remember wondering at the time if it was a good idea for us all to be there; the kindergarten performances were first thing in the morning, and by afternoon, the concerts for the remaining classes had already been canceled. I flew to Los Angeles later that day for a quick work trip, and my return flight that evening was my last air travel until December 2021.

Speaking of Covid, remember how I said that I’d have more about our travel plans a few paragraphs ago? Well, funny story: after avoiding Covid for nearly three years through equal parts luck and vigilance, our family finally caught it over the holidays. The plan had been for the kids and me to travel to Texas to visit my parents on the day after Christmas—because it was her mother’s first holiday here, Julie was going to stay home with her—but obviously that didn’t happen.

Here’s how things played out. Julie’s brother Bill arrived a few days before Christmas, having driven cross-country from Nebraska. When he arrived, he warned us that his throat had started feeling scratch that morning. Wanting to be cautious, we had him take a antibody test, which came up negative. At that point, we let our guard down a bit, and didn’t take any special precautions. Big mistake. Over the next few days, his symptoms worsened, and Julie, Julia, Joseph, and I all started to feel like we had colds coming on. By Christmas Day, we were definitely sick. That evening, feeling lousy, we tested again, and Grandma Flack, Bill, Julie, Joe, and I were all positive. Julia didn’t bother testing, since her diagnosis seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Our trip to Texas was obviously not going to happen. But, in a strange twist of fate, it might not have happened anyway: our tickets were booked on Southwest Airlines, which, owing to a confluence of bad luck and antiquated systems, suffered a complete meltdown the week of Christmas. Our flights ended up being canceled, and it’s not clear when or even if they could have gotten us to Austin.

Now that we knew we were positive, there wasn’t much for us to do other than hunker down and wait the virus out. Because William was still testing negative, we tried to isolate him as much as we could for the first day. It wasn’t going to last—more than anyone else in the family, he hates to be alone—and he ended up testing positive within twenty-four hours anyway, so we all got to be sick together.

Julie and I went on a hunt for Paxlovid prescriptions for the family, which turned out to be harder than we thought it would be. The criteria for prescribing it seemed to vary quite a bit from doctor to doctor, but eventually we managed to get prescriptions for everyone. It certainly seemed to have worked for me, at least initially: my symptoms were never anywhere close to severe, and I tested negative in about a week, on January 3. On the other hand, a couple days later, I rebounded and started testing positive again. I didn’t feel appreciably sicker, but it took me until January 13 to test negative consistently; by the end, I was really itching to get out of the house.

Viral drama aside, there are a few non-holiday photos in the gallery. There are some shots of Grandma Flack’s new apartment, taken after we hung her pictures; with everything set up, it feels very much like her place. And there are a pair of candid selfies of Julie and Joe at the DMV as Joe took and passed his driver’s test.

This actually wasn’t the first time the two of them visited the DMV intending to take the test: a couple weeks earlier, they made the trip only to learn that, due to some understandable confusion regarding the wording on the web site, they had scheduled the wrong kind of appointment. As a result, they had to make another appointment for a later date. Unfortunately, the next available appointment was more than 18 months after Joe’s original permit had been issued—and, more importantly, after it expired. They had to make a special trip to renew his permit first before returning a second time for the test.

In the end, everything worked out: he passed the test on his first try, and he is now a legally licensed driver in the state of California. That’s not to say he enjoys driving: I think the idea of it was much more alluring than the reality. But he can take himself to music lessons and to after-school activities, which is helpful on busy school nights. And should the occasion arise, he’ll be able to drive to meet up with friends, which I think he’ll find liberating.

Gallery: Christmas 2022

Julia Graduates from High School

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It seemed almost unthinkable when I started writing these posts years and years ago, but it’s true: Julia graduated from high school last month and will be attending Santa Clara University this fall. It was a long and occasionally bumpy ride—returning from school after distance learning last year was nothing short of traumatic—but through grit, hard work, and determination (and occasional cussedness), she made it through high school and senior year.

The week leading up to graduation was hectic in the extreme. Julia spent every morning at school practicing for graduation—UPA takes the ceremony very seriously. Wednesday evening was the Senior Awards Banquet, in which seniors were recognized for their accomplishments during their UPA. During the dinner, Julia took home five different awards, including:

  • Quill and Scroll, a high school journalism honor society
  • National Honor Society, for academic achievement
  • the Golden State Seal of Merit, for good grades across a broad range of subjects,
  • the State Seal of Biliteracy, for achieving proficiency in a foreign language, and
  • the Six Year Award, for students who spent the full six years at UPA

Each award came with a cord or medal that the graduate could wear with their gown at graduation; you can see Julia’s in the photos.

But for me, the clear highlight of the night was when Julia received one of four PTSO scholarships for an essay she wrote discussing some of the challenges she faced as a student whose brain does’t respond the same way to stimuli as most of her peers. As the sitting PTSO president, Julie recused herself from judging Julia’s essay, but she had the privilege of announcing her win, along with the other four winners. Although I have a few pictures, I wish I had thought to record video of the presentation; Julie was so caught up in the moment, she could scarcely get her words out.

We were very lucky in that Julie’s brother Andrew and my parents were all able to make the trip to San José for the graduation ceremony. In my parents’ case, it was a very near thing: thanks to staffing and COVID issues at the airlines, their original flight was canceled the night before they were scheduled to depart, and they were forced to scramble to reschedule. Fortunately, there were able to find something that arrived only a few hours later than they’d planned, though they did end up flying into San Francisco rather than San José.

The graduation ceremony itself was at the somewhat unfortunate time of 6:00 pm on Friday, but it moved quickly; if anything, it felt slightly shorter than the eighth grade promotion ceremony four years ago. Speeches and musical performances by students, teachers, and administrators were intermixed with video clips of the graduating class announcing what they would be doing after UPA. You can watch Julia’s clip here.

The ceremony was preceded by a performance by the small band ensemble that Joe was a part of, following their earlier appearance at the last band concert of the year a few weeks earlier. It was a fortuitous opportunity for Joe to play a small part in Julia’s big day.

After the ceremony, the full band was scheduled to perform for the graduates and their guests while they mingled outside the auditorium, and perform they did, but they were somewhat upstaged by a very loud Mariachi band that someone had hired to play in the adjacent parking lot. The UPA band seemed to take it mostly in stride, though they were undoubtedly a bit miffed, but I suspect the school administrators were not at all pleased by the disruption.

After Julia finished saying her goodbyes to everyone at school, we headed home and took some pictures in the living room, as Julia was still energized by the experience and happy to be the center of attention.

The rest of the weekend was restful compared to the busy week we had just surived. My dad helped me hook up our gas grill and pizza oven to the gas line on the patio—happily, we did not blow ourselves up—and we even managed to find a few minutes to celebrate Joe’s sixteenth birthday which, in a stroke of cosmic unfairness, happened to fall on Julia’s graduation day.

Continuing the streak of travel-related adversity, my parents’ flight home on Monday was canceled, leaving them to find an alternate route that ended up taking the through Dallas, but still got them back to Elk Grove Village that day. Even Andrew suffered a bit of unfortunate scheduling drama, which resulted in him arriving in Dayton a day later than he’d originally planned.

Once everyone had gone, we were left with just a few short days to recover from all the excitement before the next big milestone: Julia’s long-awaited major oral surgery. But that’s a story for another time.

Gallery: Julia Graduates from High School

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

Soccer, Halloween, and Fall Fun

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We had a busy fall in 2021: the school year was in full swing; William played on a soccer team for the first time; Grandma and Grandpa Wong came to visit; and, on a bittersweet note, Julia had the once-in-a-lifetime pleasure of applying to colleges. We’ve collected and posted some pictures that capture some of these experiences.

William had played soccer before, of course: starting in preschool, he took classes from Kidz Love Soccer and really enjoyed them. The teacher, Coach Scott, worked hard to make learning basic soccer skills positive and fun.

Until this year, however, he had never played in an actual soccer league, and now that we were settled back in at home, it seemed like as good a time as any to give it a try. He was fortunate to end up on a team with a number of his friends from school, baseball, and other activities, including his best buddy, Kai. Most of the other kids on the team had played before and were a little more comfortable than William with competitive games, but he adapted well. He tried his hardest, kept a positive attitude, and showed clear improvement as the season progressed. His coach adhered to the stereotypical I-yell-because-I-care philosophy, and I was initially worried about how William would respond to that style of teaching, but it didn’t seem to faze him.

In mid-October, Grandma and Grandpa Wong paid us a much-anticipated visit. If memory serves, this was the first time we saw them in person since the middle of 2019, thanks to the pandemic and other factors. They stopped by en route to their home in Texas, after first visiting Bill and Leah in Colorado Springs. Of course, San José isn’t exactly on the way to Georgetown, so we were very happy they took the extra time to stop in; we only wish they could have stayed longer.

Because Will has always been a big fan of dressing up in costumes, you might guess that Halloween is one of his favorite holidays, and you’d be right. This year, he celebrated with no fewer than three costumes: he wore his astronaut costume to school on Friday, and he switched to his Minecraft costume for late afternoon trick-or-treating on Sunday. Later in the evening, as it started to get dark, he switched to a light-up stick figure costume that garnered multiple compliments from neighbors as we went from house to house.

Julie and I split trick-or-treating duty—he was very diligent, collecting more candy than Julia or Joe ever did—and Joe spent the evening with his friend Lucas. Even they, at the advanced age of fifteen, got into the spirit of the holiday and did a spot of trick-or-treating, making sure to visit one of the nearby houses that was known to hand out full-size candy bars. As I write, at the end of January, we’re still working our way slowly through the hoard of candy they accumulated.

This fall finally brought something we’d been waiting for through most of the year: the opportunity for William to get the COVID-19 vaccine. He’s been extremely careful and conscientious throughout the pandemic, even switching to less comfortable (but more effective) KF-94 masks as the Omicron variant became dominant, without raising a fuss. Early on, we had to clarify to him that he didn’t have to wear his mask in the car as we drove from place to place: he was worried that the virus could get in from the outside and infect him.

In that context, he saw first Julie and Julia, followed by Joe and me, get our shots and feel the powerful sense of relief that came with knowing we were largely protected against severe illness. At the same time, we had to explain to him that doctors and scientists were taking the time to be extra careful to be sure that the vaccine was safe and effective in young, growing bodies.

When the Pfizer vaccine was finally approved for kids in his age range, he and Julie were almost the first in line to get a dose. The county converted a section of the vaccination site at the fairgrounds to make it more kid-friendly, complete with toys and a scavenger hunt, and William was pleased as punch to finally be vaccinated. The ice cream treat he got after the fact probably didn’t hurt, either.

Gallery: Soccer, Halloween, and Fall Fun

Christmas 2021

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We just wrapped up our trip to Nebraska for Christmas 2021, and it was something of a welcome return to normal holiday routine after two years of relative isolation. In fact, it was my first time going anywhere since February of 2020, which made the whole experience a bit jarring: I’d forgotten many of the petty indignities of air travel.

There was a flurry of activity before we left, which made the week we spent in Nebraska feel all the more relaxing. We put up Christmas decorations in and on the house for the first time since the remodel, including icicles on the second-floor eaves. We weren’t quite sure how to accomplish that, so we paid a team of folks to take care of it, and they made short work of the project. On the whole, they did a pretty good job—the lights look great—but they did leave the exposed end of our triple-trap extension cord in a place where it could slide into the gutter in the event of rain, which naturally, it did a few days later. After we realized the lights weren’t working, Julie and I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to reset the GFCI for the circuit, which happened to be inside the garage, not obviously connected to the outlet the lights were plugged into.

We also added a light-up pig to our front yard ensemble—something that Julie has long desired—and we put electric candles (gifts from Grandma and Grandpa Wong) in the windows of Joe’s bedroom and the play room. When everything is turned on, it seems almost as bright as day in front of the house, but our setup pales in comparison to some of the neighbors’. We noticed this at Halloween, as well: it seems like many people have channeled pent-up energy from being stuck at home into creating ever more fantastic holiday displays.

We set up our Christmas tree at home around mid-month so that we’d have at least a little time to enjoy it before we left town. We debated whether to put it in the family room or the living room and ultimately opted for the latter, right in front of the picture window facing the street. That way, it’s visible from outside when we have the drapes open, and it feels a little more special because it’s in a room we don’t use that often otherwise.

Due to quirks in the San Jose Unified and UPA academic calendars, William’s holiday break started almost a full week before Julia and Joe’s: their semester didn’t end until December 22, while William was released on December 17. With that in mind, Julie made arrangements to fly to Nebraska with William ahead of us, giving the two of them time to bake cookies and otherwise prepare for Christmas while the big kids wrapped up their final exams.

Julie and William left the Sunday before Christmas, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves for a few days. Things went relatively smoothly, other than the fact that by mid-day Monday I was experiencing some mild sinus congestion and other low grade cold symptoms. After not having been sick—not even a sniffle—for twenty-two months, my mind went to the worst case scenario: what if we were stuck at home for Christmas while Julie and William were in Nebraska? Fortunately, Julie had picked up some rapid antigen tests for Covid-19 a few weeks earlier, and I came up negative both Monday evening and Wednesday night. A PCR test on Tuesday confirmed the negative result Thursday morning, so I felt OK with flying later that day.

Of course, feeling OK with flying didn’t make the process any less unpleasant than it always is. And flying in the middle of a pandemic made it that much worse. We saw the full spectrum of people’s inability to follow simple directions during our trip: people who “forgot” to put on their masks when they entered the airport; people walking around with their noses hanging out, uncaring or oblivious; people who took off their masks to talk loudly on the phone; and much, much more.

At the departure gate in San José, an older couple sat down a couple seats away from us. The woman was clearly unwell: she was bleary-eyed and sniffly, and looked as though she would have much rather have been in bed. That would have been fine—I wasn’t feeling great, either—but as she started a coughing fit, she pulled off her mask. We just got up and moved at that point; I have no idea what she was sick with, but there didn’t seem to hang around nearby.

Beyond those annoyances, things went smoothly. We were very fortunate that our flights weren’t affected by the wave of cancellations that swept through the industry over the holidays, and we made it to Omaha with no complications more serious than a bit of moderate turbulence heading into and out of Salt Lake City.

Julie picked us up at the airport in Omaha, and it was a nice change of pace to arrive during daylight hours rather than near midnight, as we have in the past. We made a quick stop at a Runza drive-though for dinner and headed up to Norfolk.

The kids were excited to see Grandma Flack and their uncles Bill and Andrew, and it was comforting to participate in Julie’s family traditions. We had roast beef on Christmas Eve and decorated the tree after dinner. On Christmas morning, we opened presents at 8:00 sharp—Julia and Joe are old enough that they probably would have been happy to sleep in, but William was having none of that—and, borrowing a tradition from Grandma and Grandpa Wong, had cinnamon rolls for breakfast. That night, we roasted a turkey that Julie had started brining the day before, and there were plenty of leftovers for soup and turkey sandwiches in the days that followed.

The rest of the visit was even more laid back and relaxing than usual: because of concerns about Covid, we didn’t go out much except for near-daily curbside pickup runs at the grocery store. This gave Julia and Joe some time to slow down and relax after finals, while William was happy just to have so many people around to entertain him. Julia made vast quantities of bacon for breakfast nearly every day, and all three kids ate prodigious amounts of Spaghetti-O’s at lunch throughout our visit.

Our one big outing was to visit Aunt Julie at her nursing home in Madison. To accommodate families who want to visit residents as a group, the facility allows you to book the dining room in the assisted living wing so you can enjoy a private family meal. You can choose between whatever happens to be on the menu that evening or bring your own food, which really didn’t feel like much of a choice at all. Julie and Grandma Flack ordered a hot pulled pork meal, throwing in some brownies as a treat, from the HyVee in Norfolk, and made plans to pick it up on our way to the nursing home.

Unfortunately, things went sideways from there. When we pulled into the marked pickup spot at HyVee and called the number posted on the adjacent sign, we were sent straight to voice mail. We tried a few more times over the next few minutes and couldn’t get through to a person; worse, we discovered the the voice mailbox was full, so we couldn’t leave a message even if we wanted to.

Frustrated, Julie called the main number for the grocery store and spoke to a very nice woman who told us she would put us through the kitchen. We then sat and listened to grocery store sounds for what seemed like an eternity before Julie gave up and called the main line again. This time, the nice woman told us she would walk over to the kitchen to make sure we got through and, to her credit, she did just that. Julie chatted briefly with someone on the other end who assured us that our order would be out promptly.

“Promptly” means different things to different people, but finally, after what felt like a pretty long wait, someone appeared at the car window with brownies and… nothing else. Julie pointed out that this wasn’t right—she had the original order confirmation on her phone—and the person disappeared back into the store leaving us to wait still longer. Finally, the store employee reappeared accompanied by someone from the kitchen who explained their systems didn’t show anything in our order except brownies; the rest of our items seemed to have vanished into the ether.

Out of patience and time, as we’d spent more than twenty minutes sitting in the parking lot, and Grandma Flack and Uncle Bill had already arrived at the nursing home, we took the brownies and audibled: instead of pulled pork, we would have delicious Arby’s roast beef sandwiches for dinner. We zipped off to the drive-through, put in an order for a pile of sandwiches and various types of fries, and finally started on our way to Madison. Luckily for us, they couldn’t start dinner without us because we had all the food.

All the drama aside, we had a very pleasant visit with Aunt Julie; because we had the dining room to ourselves, we could relax and move around without feeling rushed or like we were in the way. Aunt Julie and Julia really hit it off, as Julia regaled her with stories of cute things Felix has done over the last couple years, illustrated by pictures from her phone. Our one major regret is that, after all the excitement, I forgot to take pictures while we were there.

Our return trip on December 30 was blissfully uneventful. Getting home before the start of the new year left us with plenty of time to wind down and re-acclimate to life at home before William’s return to school on January 4 (the older kids, having finished later in December, don’t start again until January 10—this left us plenty of time for Julia to work on college applications). It also allowed us to enjoy one final holiday tradition: Big Fat Pancakes for dinner on New Year’s Day.

Gallery: Christmas 2021

Early 2013

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We don’t have many new photos to present at the moment, though there are a great many pictures from the summer we have yet to process, so we’ve thrown together a small collection of photos from early 2013, way back before William was born, and not too long after we had learned that he was on his way.

In the meantime, the school year is well under way—we’re entering its third week, and William’s first full day is tomorrow—and the summer’s festivities are gradually coming to an end. The Parks for Life program Julie has been doing with the kids wraps up on Friday, and the older kids’ swimming lessons are finished on Thursday.

So far, Julia has adjusted beautifully to the more complicated world of high school. She’s enjoying her classes, has found a nice group of friends, and even has a part in the school play. She’s been great about working on Khan Academy with me to get ahead of the game in math, and she’s had a positive attitude about working with us to adjust to the greater challenges presented by high school coursework.

Joe, likewise, is staying on top of things. He hasn’t had much homework to speak of yet, but Mr. Guevara, his history teacher and one of the principals behind the founding of UPA, said at Back to School night that we should expect that to change shortly. The biggest challenge he’s facing at the moment is the fact that his clarinet isn’t working right, which has him stressed out and Julie making multiple trips to the music store to get things sorted.

Finally, William is loving TK with Ms. Pak. According to Julie, his only complaints have been that he doesn’t get to stay long enough, and that there’s not enough time to play outside during lunch recess. Both of those complaints will be addressed this week, when the class switches from half days to full days, giving him a longer lunch break and about two and a half extra hours at school each day.

He’s also started working with the new Khan Academy Kids app, which has him very excited because he gets to do “homework” like his older siblings. We’ll see how he feels in a few years when we’re making him do math exercises over the summer.

Even with limited time in class, he’s already producing masterpieces like this:

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One can only imagine what he’ll do with another ten hours every week.

Gallery: Early 2013

Christmas 2017

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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.

IMG 0179

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:

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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

First Day of School 2017 & California 1982

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First Days of School

The new school year is underway, and with it comes the usual assortment of crises, drama, and schedule conflicts. I’ve included the traditional first-day-of-school pictures above; sadly, because the kids started on different days, each was taken solo, rather than together.

Joe started sixth grade at Willow Glen Middle this year, and seems to be adjusting well to the complexities of a middle school schedule. He complains that his classes are too easy, but I hope that things will pick up a bit as we get further into the semester. His one stumbling block, as usual, is organization. His Language Arts / Social Studies teacher dropped us a note a couple weeks ago asking us to work with him to get his binder cleaned up—it was, in her words, a mess. And, he’s already lost points on an assignment that he believes he turned in, but lacks any evidence supporting that assertion, because he threw out a bunch of old assignments that were crumpled in the bottom of his backpack. Still, his grades are excellent, and he’s clicking with his teachers. He even went to the first dance of the year, which seems very grown-up even if he called home asking to be picked up a little more than halfway through because it was “boring”.

There has been a bit of drama among Joe and his friends, but that’s a story for another time.

Julia is enjoying eighth grade so far at UPA, and she’s been doing a fantastic job of keeping up with her work and just getting things done. As a result, she has a lot more free time in the afternoon after school, and evenings at home are much more relaxed and pleasant; we haven’t once had to stay up past 11:00 working on an assignment due the next day. She’s looking forward to the possibility of going on the eight grade trip to Washington, DC later this year; if she’s able to make it, we’re hoping it will go better than mine did.

Finally, William kicked off his second (and final) year of preschool last week at Discovery Parent Child Preschool. He attends Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays this year with Teacher Sally, and he’s palpably excited about it every school day.

Perhaps the best part of the new school year for William is the fact that he’s finally fully potty trained. He tiptoed around the idea of using the toilet for a year or so, and then moved on to urinating in the potty with gradually increasing frequency, but actually pooping anywhere other than his diaper seemed completely out of reach for the longest time. Over the last couple months, it’s finally clicked, and he’s worn underwear full time for a few weeks now. We’ve handed off the changing table to another family and disposed of the diaper genie on Craigslist; thirteen years after Julia was born, it looks like we are finally done with diapers.

Now we just have to work on wiping.

As an extra bonus that likely interests only me, I recently scanned and cleaned up the photos I had of the Wong Family trip to California, way back in 1982. It was my first-ever plane trip, and represented the farthest I’d ever been from home. As was my wont, I developed an ear infection within the first couple days of the trip, necessitating a hurried trip to a clinic—it may have actually been the emergency room—for antibiotics. Adding to the excitement, while Dad worked at the local Motorola office, Mom took us shopping at the Vallco Mall, which is technically still open for sufficiently broad definitions of the word “open,” where the rental car’s battery died.

Looking back, the photos are a fascinating snapshot of the area 35 years ago, and it’s interesting to see how landmarks like the Winchester Mystery House, the Carmel Mission, and the mountains across the bay from Santa Clara (the Diablo Range, if I’m reading the Wikipedia article correctly) have changed over the decades. For fun, I composed a 2011 photo of Julia and Joseph in Muir Woods with a similar shot of Bill and me at a similar, if not necessarily identical, location. I love the comparison; one thing that stands out to me about the earlier photograph is our neatly pressed jeans, highlighting one small way in which the world has changed.

Muir Woods Comparison

Gallery: California 1982

Fall 2011

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Because Joe is starting middle school in about a week, it seemed only appropriate to set the time machine all the way back to Fall 2011, when he was just about to enter kindergarten. In that spirit, we’ve posted a set of pictures from that simpler time.

The gallery covers everything from the kids‘ first day of school to a quick family trip up to Point Reyes and Muir Woods, and ends with my parents’ Thanksgiving visit.

There are quite a few soccer pictures mixed in, as well, and this year was notable for the fact that both kids’ teams actually placed in the season-ending tournament. If I recall correctly (it was six years ago, after all), Julia’s team came in third in her age group, and Joe’s team actually won. Neither of them has been able to replicate that level of success in the years since.

Looking back, it’s darkly funny to remember how worried we were about the kids’ bickering at the time. Little did we know what we were in for in years to come.

Gallery: Fall 2011.