Category Archives: Nebraska

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

William is Five

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Much has happened in the month since we last posted, but by far the most significant happening was William’s long-awaited fifth birthday. We haven’t processed the pictures from the grand occasion yet—there are some in the works—but he is already asking when his next birthday will be, so it seems safe to conclude that he had a good time.

As you know if you’ve been following our birthday updates over the years, one of our longstanding traditions has been that the birthday boy or girl gets to have dinner (with the family, of course, though I think the older kids would prefer otherwise) at a restaurant of his or her choosing. In recent years, this ritual has proven to be be a bit costly, as both Julia and Joe have settled on Benihana as their favorite place to celebrate. William, thankfully, took it easy on our schedule and our budget by going a different direction entirely: Burger King. We went on Saturday night instead of his actual birthday to eliminate the time constraints of a school night, and we were joined there by Kai, one of William’s oldest friends, and his family.

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Although William received a great many things for his birthday—as often seems to be the case on these occasions, you don’t realize quite how many gifts you’ve acquired until you actually gather them in one place to wrap them—perhaps the most exciting to me was one we bought secondhand: a bicycle. It’s Avengers-themed, which seems only appropriate given William’s love of superheroes, and it was an immediate hit when we showed it to him on Sunday. With luck, we’ll be able to wean him off the training wheels in the next year or so.

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In other William news, we received his first school picture from Booksin, and although it’s perhaps not the best picture he’s ever taken, it does capture his personality reasonably well. It can be viewed in full size and in context with his preschool portraits on his school pictures page.

Transitional Kindergarten

Finally, though we don’t have a full set of pictures to present today, we do have something slightly different. It happens to be our eighteenth anniversary, and I’ve uploaded the video my Uncle Jack recorded at our wedding and reception. The fortuitous timing is actually a bit of a coincidence: I’ve been working on getting this footage into the computer and online for the last couple months, but the date provided a bit of extra motivation to knock it out this weekend.

The quality of the video isn’t great—it was originally VHS, after all—but I’m glad it worked at all, given the age of the media. The result is probably about as good as you can expect, absent a willingness to spend couple hundred dollars on a time base corrector on top of the money we already spent on a VCR (ours stopped working years ago) and a video capture device. Now that we have a digital copy, we no longer have to worry about the tapes crumbling into dust; and should the impulse ever strike us to relive our interminable first dance, we can do so effortlessly.

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.

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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

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.

Christmas 2015

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A few weeks ago, we returned home from our bi-annual Christmas trip to Nebraska. Although we took a vast number of photos, in typical fashion, we haven’t gone through them yet. For now, all we have to share is a brief video.

At some point since our last holiday trip to Norfolk, it seems that the airlines have restructured their routes so that the relatively convenient flight we used to take, which delivered us from San José to Omaha via Denver, no longer exists. Instead, we were presented with an array of unappealing options with stops in relatively out-of-the-way places like Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Ultimately, we chose a route that originated in San Francisco and stopped in Dallas. Total travel time was longer than we were accustomed to, but the kids got a kick out of seeing two new airports.

Actually, saying that they got a kick out of it might be overstating their excitement a bit. Ten minutes into the hourlong drive to SFO (and just after we passed the San José airport), Joe asked whether we were almost there. That said, both of the older kids were suitably impressed by the relatively grand scale of the terminal in San Francisco.

Dallas was fun for everyone because we got to take the train between our arrival and departure terminals, which were spread out over the approximately 1,600 square miles of the airport. William was especially excited to be able to ride the “toot–toot,” and he didn’t seem fazed by the fact that it didn’t particularly resemble Thomas the Tank Engine.

Side note: on the way home, which also took us through Dallas, it was immediately clear which state we were in when, as soon as we deplaned, we were faced with a sign that read, “Shopping is bigger in Texas,” and a information desk staffed by a white–haired gentleman in a cowboy hat.

We arrived in Omaha mid–evening and, after picking up our rented minivan, headed directly to Norfolk. We made it to Julie’s mother’s house at a relatively reasonable hour once the time change was factored in, and got the kids tucked into bed without too much fuss.

The weather was dry and the ground was clear when we arrived, and the kids had plenty of time to scope out the creek and open space behind Grandma’s house, though they were a bit disappointed that there wasn’t any snow. On Christmas Eve, however, snow started to fall, much to everyone’s excitement. The blanket of white stuff did little to deter the older kids from further exploration: Joe discovered a small retention pond a few houses down, which he insisted was a lake, and Julia somehow managed to fall into the creek three times in one day.

After Christmas, Julia and Joe were extremely eager to try their hands at sledding. To kids growing up in California with parents who, unlike the vast majority of their peers, don’t know how to snowboard or ski, the whole concept is highly novel. On what turned out to be an especially blustery afternoon, we took all three kids out to Skyview Park for a few trips down the hill, as seen in the video. We lasted longer than I expected—I thought I was going to lose a finger trying to hold the camera without my gloves—and everyone had fun, including William, who seemed to enjoy the idea of throwing snow at me as much as anything else. Apparently, all the time we spent reading Snow by P.D. Eastman and Roy McKie paid off.

In fact, Joe enjoyed it so much that he begged and pleaded for us to go again the next afternoon. Julia and William demurred, but I took Joe back to the park for a second go. This time, I elected to stay in the warm van while he played in the snow, but he did just fine on his own. True, he was in tears by the time he finished and returned to the car, crying that he was cold and wanted to go home to California, but I don’t think that in any way diminishes the fact that he enjoyed himself right up to the point where he decided he was going to freeze to death.

Christmas itself was the usual blur of presents and food. As usual, the kids were excited about their gifts: Joe received a Lego TARDIS set, which he insisted on starting right away, and Julia dove right into reading The Martian, which originally interested her because she’d heard it contained a lot of swearing—which it does—and plowed right through it in the space of a few days. As a reward, we let both kids see the considerably less profane film version this past weekend.

William was, by and large, happy and excited to be there. He’s definitely starting to get the knack of the present thing, though, and is more than happy to help unwrap others’ gifts as well as his own. He was easygoing and well–behaved more or less the entire trip, including all four flights.

Going in, we knew we were in for a bit of trouble on the way home, as our flight was scheduled to arrive around 10:30 in the evening after a late afternoon departure. It was windy and snowy the morning we left, and the forecast called for significant snow in Omaha, so we left Norfolk before noon, hoping to avoid any delays that might cause us to miss our flight.

As it turns out, we needn’t have worried about the drive, as our flight to Dallas was delayed significantly. It could have been worse, though: we still made it out in time to catch our connection in Dallas, whereas some families were told that their flights had been canceled and that they would not be able to travel for days.

Things went from bad to worse in Dallas, however. The area, including the airport, was still recovering from a series of severe storms that had swept through over the preceding days, and our flight was delayed several times, largely (and frustratingly) without explanation. We finally arrived back in San Francisco after midnight local time, which made it past 2:00 for the kids. Julia and William napped on the plane, but Joe somehow managed to stay awake the entire time, finally passing out on the ten-minute shuttle bus ride to long term parking with Julie to pick up our car.

In the meantime, Julia and I waited with William at the curb outside the baggage claim, watching people flout the no-stopping rules and listening to an irate man who seemed to have lost a bag, forgotten to arrange for ground transportation, or otherwise failed to anticipate one of the many ways a trip can go wrong, repeatedly scream the f-word at the top of his lungs. Having just read The Martian, at least she was prepared.

Video: Christmas 2015.

Christmas Pictures

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As I hinted in our last update, having a working camera at Christmas allowed us more latitude in terms of taking pictures than we were accustomed to. The end result was hundreds of pictures—most of them not especially good: having a camera is hardly the same thing as knowing how to use one, and our new camera is a fair bit more complicated than the one we had before—to sort through, evaluate, and try to make presentable. Finally, nearly a month later, we’ve uploaded our Christmas album.

The season kicked off with the winter band concert at Booksin. After a year or so of learning the trumpet, things are starting to click for Julia. It helps that we belatedly realized that she has a secret weapon in the form of her mother: not many of her bandmates are lucky enough to have someone who played the same instrument for years and years at home. Rather than having Julia head off to her room to practice on her own, which was never very effective, we’ve taken to having her work one-on-one with Julie for fifteen minutes in the evening, so she’s getting expert, real-time feedback on how she’s doing. She’s showing real improvement, and she seems to be enjoying playing more as a result. She did a great job at the concert, even if she’s a little tough to make out in the photos, hidden behind her friend Zoe’s music stand and a giant saxophonist. The shots in which she’s front and center were taken after the show, when the band director let each group of kids come to the front of the stage for a photo opportunity—he certainly knows his audience.

For the second consecutive year, Joe’s YMCA Adventure Guides circle did an evening trip to Downtown Ice. Joe won’t be competing in short track any time soon, but he had a good time. Unlike last year, we actually met up with the group: I worked from home that afternoon rather than try to fight traffic down from Palo Alto during rush hour. My biggest takeaway by far was that ice skating is really, really painful; my feet are cramping up just thinking about it.

We spent the holidays at Grandma Flack’s house in Nebraska, and we were lucky to be able to see all of Julie’s brothers on Christmas day in Norfolk and later, at David’s place in Malcolm. Julia and Joe eagerly anticipated seeing their cousins, and they didn’t disappoint; Greg was especially patient with them.

One of the other things the kids were looking forward to—perhaps more than anything else—was Grandma Flack’s electric typewriter. They spent some time banging out notes on it the last time we spent Christmas in Nebraska (two years ago for those of you keeping track at home), and it was still fresh in their minds this time around. This year, in addition to assembling personalized missives for each of the adults in the house, they wrote notes for Santa, which we left out on Christmas Eve along with the traditional milk and cookies. Naturally, Santa took a few moments out from his busy night to leave them handwritten replies.

In contrast to the typewriter, one of the kids’ other thrills this year was watching the Doctor Who Christmas special, streamed over the Internet to my iPad, since Grandma Flack’s cable company doesn’t offer BBC America. Interestingly, they didn’t make much of a distinction between these two technologies, separated as they are by a more than a half-century of progress. To them, they were just ordinary things that worked and could more or less be taken for granted; if anything, the fact that the typewriter produced tangible, solid artifices they could hold in their hands made it more interesting than the purely virtual reality of the iPad.1

Of course, It was William’s very first Christmas, though he seemed a bit nonplussed by all the festivities. He spent a significant portion of our stay napping with Aunt Julie, who worked assiduously to find positions for him that might relieve gas pains. Grandma Flack was able to turn up a crib, swing, bouncy seat, and a playmat that was nearly identical to the one we have here in San José, so William felt right at home, as evidenced by the fact, he felt comfortable enough to maintain his policy of not sleeping for more than two hours straight.

He even did reasonably well on the flights to and from Nebraska. We didn’t have a seat for him, so he spent the entirety of his time on the plane on our laps, but he didn’t fuss much at all in the grand scheme of things. We flew Southwest, which doesn’t have assigned seats, so he actually served as an effective good-luck charm on the way out to Nebraska: I held him on my lap throughout the boarding process, and no one elected to sit next to me.

Flying Southwest had one other benefit: unlike most other airlines, they still don’t charge for your first checked bag, and we were able to take advantage of that policy to help us get the kids’ gifts (of which there were many: every year, we vow not to let things get too out of hand, and every year, we fail) back to California without having to spend too much on shipping. This year, we got away with just sending one large box via FedEx; everything else came on the plane with us.

While we were in Nebraska, Julia also started work on her very first science fair project. She did an experiment judging the effectiveness of different types of detergent in removing oil from feathers, chamois, and rabbit fur (being in the Midwest, rather than California, ensured that we wouldn’t have any problem acquiring whatever animal products we needed to conduct the experiments). Julia didn’t have to present her work or be judged this time around, but she enjoyed putting together her poster—which was covered in stickers, naturally—and testing her hypothesis. Going down to Champaign for the state science fair in the seventh grade is one of my favorite childhood memories, so I’m looking forward to even more exciting projects down the road.

Seating aside, the actual travel portion of the trip was more eventful than usual this year. I had forgotten how much fun it is to get through airport security with a stroller and an infant. Luckily, Julia and Joseph are both old enough to get through the process more or less independently, but I pity the poor, unfortunate souls who ended up behind us in the security line, especially now that the slower, hold-your-hands-in-the-air naked-picture machines have largely replaced metal detectors in the airports we travel through.

Making things even more exciting was the fact that Mother Nature was being extremely uncooperative while we were trying to get from place to place. While we were actually in Nebraska, the weather was fairly pleasant: a couple of times, it even got up into the 50s and 60s, warm enough for the kids to go outside and play with some of their new toys. But the visit was bookended by some absolutely brutal weather. Our outbound flight was delayed by almost three hours due to precipitation elsewhere in the country, long enough that we had to call ahead to make special arrangements with the rental car company so that we would have a way to get to Norfolk upon our arrival.

On the day we headed back to California, the temperature dropped to around zero, and the wind chill was unspeakably low. Our flight to Denver was delayed by more than four hours, and we missed our connection to San José completely. Fortunately, Julie was able to make last-minute hotel arrangements while we waited, and we spent the night in a cozy little room close to the airport. The kids (other than William, who didn’t seem to have an opinion) thought it was a grand adventure, while I was mostly worried about missing a day of work.

Gallery: Christmas 2013

  1. As an aside, that progress could grind to a screeching halt if the big telecommunications companies get their way on net neutrality. I’m probably biased, seeing as I make my living in the tech industry, but the open Internet has done more to drive innovation over the last twenty years than just about any technology, and companies like AT&T and Verizon are trying to kill it out of avarice. We probably shouldn’t let them. ↩

Christmas 2013

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We took a ton of pictures during our trip to Nebraska for the holidays—more than 400 of them—so it’s taking some time to sort through them all, especially since I’m anal-retentive about making sure each and every photograph is tagged with the location it was taken and the names of the people it contains. Come to think of it, this compulsion might be why we’re still posting pictures from 2009.

With that in mind, we’re breaking with tradition and posting our Christmas video before the associated pictures. As usual, you can view the web version of the movie using the link above, or you can download the much larger high-definition version.

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.

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.

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.