Category Archives: Holiday

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.

Thanksgiving and Christmas Preparations

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Catching up on the last couple months, we’ve posted some pictures from Thanksgiving and the weeks leading up to Christmas.

This Thanksgiving, for the first time ever, we used our dining area (calling it a room seems more than a tad generous) for an actual meal. This tremendous step was made possible by the removal of the kids’ train table, which Julie gave away via Craigslist. Not having babies and toddlers and their associated detritus lying around the house sure is convenient! In fact, a couple weeks ago, we also disposed of the kids’ play kitchen in the same fashion. It’s a good thing that part of our lives is behind us.

Thanksgiving weekend, Julia’s Girl Scout troop headed to Christmas in the Park to decorate a tree for the second year running. The girls did most of the decorating—with a little help from some of the younger brothers—and then we headed to Downtown Ice, an outdoor ice rink set up by downtown businesses in San José. Julia had been ice skating with her class the previous year; but Joe had never tried, and I hadn’t skated since sometime around the last ice age, so things were a bit dicey for a bit. Mostly, I held Joe’s hand as we slowly made our way around the wall at the edge of the rink.

After skating, we went out to lunch, where Julia was honored as the troop’s top cookie seller for 2012. Considering the angst having to sell candy bars door to door for the Cub Scouts engendered in me when I was Julia’s age, it was a relief to see her do so well. That’s at least one area in which she’s already surpassed me.

As the season wore on, we went on a couple outings with Pierce, one of Julia’s friends from school. We decorated gingerbread houses at the San José Woman’s Club—personally, I was gravely disappointed that we didn’t get to actually eat the various treats we attached to the cookie houses. The next weekend, we went to have breakfast with Santa at the Fairmont Hotel in San José. Unfortunately, the presence of Blinky, the official mascot of Christmas in the Park, left Julia terrified, at least for a bit, but she got over it quickly enough. For some reason, there were also two guys in Star Wars stormtrooper costumes. Presumably, they were Santa’s security detail: in the post-9/11 world, it’s impossible to be too careful.

Consumed by the spirit of holiday giving, Julie and I both managed to get $40 parking tickets during the breakfast. Never let it be said that we aren’t concerned with the welfare of our fellow citizens.

Captain America vs. The Candy Corn Witch

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Julia and Joseph have declared Halloween their second-favorite holiday after, of course, Christmas. Their love for holidays seems to be proportional to the total mass of the the stuff they receive in observance of the date. By this metric, Flag Day seems to be a big loser: school is usually out by the time mid-June rolls around, so they don’t even get cookies at a class party.

This year, the kids decided they had to get their pumpkin at the pop-up pumpkin “patch” in the parking lot of the light-rail station near our house. I tried in vain to convince them of the advantages of some of the more authentic alternatives—corn mazes, bunnies, working trains, etc.—but they were unmoved. The allure of the giant, inflatable shark slide they saw from the car was too much to resist.

Incidentally, the night before our trip to the pumpkin lot, we had dinner at the very same parking facility. There’s a local company, Moveable Feast, that brings together food trucks from around the area on nights and weekends. Joe, Julia and I had pretty traditional food truck fare: burritos and hot dogs. Julie, on the other hand, went all-out with a bacon cheeseburger that featured two halves of a glazed donut in place of a bun. It was a welcome change of pace—there were a ton of interesting options—and a unique experience (not to mention a convenient way for the food truck operators to make a bit of extra money outside their normal peak hours). Julie has almost fully recovered.

We picked up the pumpkin on Saturday, but didn’t get a chance to carve it until Wednesday afternoon, the day of Halloween. Julia was working on her Pitcher Pressure book report all day Sunday, and the kids were tied up with activities and errands Monday and Tuesday. With Spanish class, soccer practice and Julia’s science class, their days are far more fully booked than I remember mine being when I was either of their ages.

Scheduling concerns aside, the pumpkin did get carved, and the kids were ready for trick-or-treating by the time I made it home Wednesday night. Joe had planned to go as Spider-Man right up to the day the kids and Julie went shopping, when he changed his mind and decided he wanted to be Captain America. Julia originally thought she would re-use her Spider-Girl costume from last year, which would have conveniently allowed us to save a bit of money. Naturally, that impulse didn’t last—it never stood a chance, really—and she decided she would make up her mind at the costume store. Were she like me, this would have had the makings of a colossal disaster, but Julia found her outfit at the very first shop they visited. She elected to go as a candy corn witch, complete with a candy corn hat and a candy corn shirt. Julie even took her to get her nails done in the familiar candy corn pattern, an excursion which kept her out late on a school night, but everyone seems to have survived.

We have pictures, of course. There’s not much time to dwell on Halloween for now: the Toys ’R Us holiday catalog came in the mail yesterday, and the kids are busily circling the items they’d like Santa to bring for Christmas.

Joe Turns Six (and the Ghost of Christmas Past)

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It’s summer here in San Jose, so naturally I’m staying inside to post pictures of the kids. The alternative—working outside in the yard—is too frightening to contemplate.

We actually have two new sets of pictures up on the site this weekend. The first is a batch of photos from the last month or so, including Joe’s sixth birthday. The second takes us a little further back in time, all the way to Christmas 2008.

Seeing as it’s early June, the biggest news, of course, is that Joe’s birthday has come and gone. We played it pretty low key this year: just the family, Joe’s choice of dinner (cheeseburgers cooked on the grill) and an ice cream cake. Lego Ninjago seemed to be the overriding theme. It’s become cliché to comment on how different Lego sets are from the ones people my age had growing up, but, well, they’re definitely different. Nevertheless, there are certainly worse pastimes, like his other obsessions, Sonic and Mario.

Speaking of toys I had growing up, my parents sent us a Magic Shot, which is a near replica of the one my brother had when he and I were little—it even has the same half-functioning bell. Magic Shot consists of a plastic box, a magnetic gun, and a slew of metal BB pellets that you can shoot at targets inside the box. Now that’s a good, old-fashioned toy.

I apologize for the somewhat low quality of the birthday pictures: our main camera is broken, and Julie’s fancy new phone wasn’t charged, so we were left to capture the moment with my old phone.

Just about a year ago, Joe had his first visit from the tooth fairy after he lost one of his bottom front teeth. This seemed a bit early, as Julia still hadn’t lost her first tooth yet, but still within the realm of reason: his teeth came in earlier than hers, after all. Well, as of this writing, Joe has lost six teeth altogether, including his two top front teeth and both lower canines just in the last couple months. Suffice it to say that he’s not gnawing on a lot of beef jerky.

At this point, I have no idea if this is completely normal, cause for panic, or something in between. We’re going to give it a couple weeks to see if his permanent teeth start poking through his gums. He still sucks his thumb more or less compulsively, so that may be a factor. He’s also been playing with his “loose” teeth constantly, so I’m vaguely concerned that he’s actually making them loose in anticipation of the big tooth fairy payout. If this doesn’t stop, we’re either going to have to coat his fingers with something foul tasting or give him a quick lesson in economics: he might be a bit less excited about the dollar coins the tooth fairy brings if he understands that each of them covers about fifteen seconds of a college education.

Christmas 2011

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After another extended absence, we’re back, this time bearing pictures from the 2011 holiday season, highlighted by our trip to see Grandma Flack in Nebraska. This year’s trip was a little bit bittersweet for Julie and the kids, as it was the first time we’ve spent the holiday at Grandma’s new house in Norfolk. Of course, Julia and Joseph adapted quickly: they were thrilled out of their minds to be spending a whole week in a house with stairs (or, as they call it, a “stair house”) and sleeping in the basement.

As usual when we fly to Nebraska, our midday flight out of San José left us arriving in Omaha late in the evening, and the two-hour drive to Norfolk meant that we weren’t going to get there at a decent hour. In a change from previous Christmas trips, we rented a car at the airport; this assuaged our guilt about our late arrival somewhat, because it meant that Julie’s brother Bill didn’t have to trek down to Omaha to pick us up. The kids were inexplicably excited about the rental (more Wong vocabulary: a “borrow car”), but there was a small wrinkle: the box of gifts we’d checked on the flight over—necessarily only because I somehow managed to have most of our gifts shipped to our house instead of Nebraska—wouldn’t fit in the trunk. Somehow, Julie managed to squeeze it in, albeit not with doing significant damage its structural integrity. It wouldn’t be the same again.

Julia and Joseph are at an age where flying with them actually isn’t torture. This worked out well for us, because there was a glitch with our tickets that resulted in us being separated on the first leg of our flight. I probably should have been worried when United’s online check-in system wouldn’t work for my reservation, but didn’t have a problem with everyone else’s. Everything was fine when we got to the counter to check our luggage, however, and it wasn’t until I tried to board that things went sideways and the computer rejected my boarding pass out of hand. Fortunately, the gate agent was able to straighten things out in short order.

As I was saying, the kids were well-behaved pretty much the whole time we were airborne. Julia spent most of the time doing Mad Libs, which I wasn’t aware had made the transition to the twenty-first century. Other than the fact that she had to be dissuaded from using the same adjective for every blank on a particular page, she more or less got the hang of it. For Joe, the highlight of the day came as we were boarding the flight from Denver to Omaha. The captain, having overheard one of the flight attendants chatting with Julia, noticed Joe as he came aboard and invited him into the cockpit. He gave him a quick rundown of the controls, let him sit in the pilot’s seat, and even let him try on his hat. I have no idea if this was legal or kosher in this hyper-paranoid era, but it absolutely made Joe’s day. He spent the rest of the flight telling people that he had learned how to be a pilot and trying to explain to me which handle controlled the air brake.

On the topic of security, I got to go through the body scanners that are funding Michael Chertoff’s retirement on the way out of San José, so if you find naked pictures of me on the Internet, that’s totally the reason, not my seldom-indulged exhibitionist streak.

Everyone had a blast the whole time we were in Nebraska. We got to eat at Runza and, for the first time in almost 13 years, Jimmy John’s; we helped Julie’s brother Andy help set up a new computer for Grandma Flacks, which I sincerely hope is still working; Julie and I managed to sneak out of the house after the kids went to sleep to catch a movie; and we had lots of time to relax, read books and do Lego with the kids—Andy was especially involved in that process. Of course, Julia and Joseph were most excited to see their only cousins, Tony and Greg. Tony and Greg have lots of cousins on their mother Beth’s side, so they were probably a bit baffled by the raw intensity of the attention they received from our kids, but they handled the situation with grace and aplomb. Little do they know that their kindness only ensures that Julia and Joseph will be equally enthusiastic the next time they come for a visit.

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.

Fall 2008

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Continuing our ongoing effort to get caught up, here’s a batch of pictures from fall 2008. Highlights include Julia’s first day of Junior K; Halloween, featuring the hand-me-down chicken costume’s third deployment; and Thanksgiving.

Some of these photos were taken with my late, not particularly lamented phone, so their quality is a little below par.

Christmas 2009 Video

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It’s taken a bit of fiddling with some uncooperative software, but we’ve posted the video we shot during our Christmas trip to Nebraska last month. You can find it here.

We have actually posted two versions of the movie. The first, which you’ll see if you visit the page using Firefox, Safari or Chrome, is a smaller, lower-quality representation that is sized for viewing over the Internet: just click the link above, and the video will play. Well, it should play.

The second version is a high-resolution copy that you can download and play full-screen or burn to a DVD. To get this version, click the link that says “Download the high-resolution version.” Note that this is a very large file that may take some time to download.

Christmas 2009

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We’re back from a weeklong trip to Nebraska for Christmas during which we somehow managed to avoid being killed, arrested or frozen until spring. You can find the pictures here.

Things started out on slightly shaky ground when I had minor surgery four days before we were scheduled to leave. There wasn’t any real health risk associated with travel—other than the fact that I wasn’t supposed to lift anything heavier than ten pounds. Needless to say, this made navigating the check-in process more interesting and fun for Julie.

Just to make things more interesting, I somehow managed to shave off one of the knots holding my stitches in place the morning we left town, which left open the possibility that my wound might reopen, and my head simply roll off my neck at some point during the flight. That was the image I had running through my mind throughout the day, at least.

Nobody flies directly from San Jose to Omaha, so we had a convenient, two-hour stopover in Denver. This was perfectly fine in theory: it gave us plenty of time to get from one gate to the next and to grab some dinner, since our flight was scheduled to arrive in Nebraska sometime after 10:30 that evening. Unfortunately, United had something altogether different in mind, and our outgoing flight was delayed. Not just delayed, but delayed a full four and a half hours, until 11:40 Mountain Time. Now, instead of a convenient two-hour break to stretch our legs and have a relaxed (if preposterously expensive) dinner, we had six and a half hours to kill.

Now, a six or seven-hour delay really doesn’t seem that bad in the grand scheme of things. In fact, at that very moment, my friend Steve was in the middle of a two-day delay in New York with his mother, during which he had to make his own arrangements for lodging and travel to and from the airport. So a few extra hours in Denver wouldn’t be so bad, except for two child-sized factors.

As it turns out, though, we underestimated the kids. All things considered, they behaved extremely well while we waited for our departure, though there were a few times I thought security was going to drag us off to the bowels of the airport for spending too much time doing laps on the moving walkways. Fortunately, we were at the far end of the terminal, and there weren’t too many people for us to disturb.

Incidentally, Denver International Airport has the worst WiFi network in the history of the known universe. I know it’s churlish to complain about Internet access that is, after all, free, but still: worst ever.

We finally arrived in Omaha around 2:30 the next morning, and thanks to Julie’s brother Bill, we made it up to Madison by 5:00 and settled in for a nice, relaxing visit. In fact, things ended up being even more relaxing than we’d planned, as the region was knocked for a loop by a combination of snow, wind and cold that left us virtual shut-ins for the second half of the trip. Roads were closed throughout the state due to drifting snow, so we didn’t even make it down to Julie’s brother Dave’s house, and Julia was extremely disappointed that she didn’t get a chance to see her only cousins in the world.

The one other piece of news worth noting is that I think it’s safe to say that Julia is officially reading. She was already doing a pretty good job of sounding out words and parsing sentences when my parents were here for Thanksgiving last month. Now, she’s pretty much reading whole books—when motivated—on her own, and she’s picked up the trick of reading random roadside signs aloud when we tool around town in the car. Obviously, this is just one step in her development, but it’s a pretty nifty one.

Easter 2008

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Yes, you read that right: we’re posting 18-month-old pictures. A splendid time is guaranteed for all. Highlights include: one measly shot of Joe at his school egg hunt; pictures of Julia and her friends at her class party (careful observers will note that she was then in the same class that Joe is in now); shots of Easter morning at home; and, finally, photos from a party at Julia’s friend Molly’s house.

Coming soon: a first glimpse of Joe’s birth!