Category Archives: School

Joe’s 2023-2024 School Pictures

Posted on by

Things are a little different with respect to school pictures this year. Because it’s his senior year, Joe has already taken his yearbook pictures, and it’s not even the end of August. William will have his taken in a few weeks’ time, but rather than sit on Joe’s pictures until William’s are ready, we thought we’d share them now.

Seniors at UPA get more than a basic head shot in their school uniform: they’re dressed up in fake formalwear and graduation gowns and take pictures in a variety of poses ranging from solemn to goofy. We had a total of thirty-three options to choose from, including black and white and color variations, and selected five to post here. You can find high-resolution versions of these pictures, along with all of Joe’s old school pictures, in his school picture gallery.

Wong Joseph img 0478 ZF 0140 84465 1 001 015

Wong Joseph img 0492 ZF 0140 84465 1 001 032

Wong Joseph img 0478 BW 1 ZF 0140 84465 1 001 017

Wong Joseph img 0482 ZF 0140 84465 1 001 022

Wong Joseph img 0484 ZF 0140 84465 1 001 026

Gallery: Joseph

Orchids and Prom 2023

Posted on by

This month brought a pair of exciting firsts: one of the orchids we’ve been taking care of for the last three years finally bloomed; and Joe went to his first high school prom. Of course, these aren’t exactly on the same level, but they gave me a theme to hang this post on. Naturally, we have pictures to share.

The prom was held at the Winchester Mystery House, which we’ve visited as tourists several times over the years, including way back in 1982. Joe went alone and met up with some of his friends at the event. He’s been somewhat taciturn about the evening—he is a teenager, after all—but he seems to have had a good time on the whole. He even sent us a few pictures, which we’ve included in the gallery.

Rounding out the set is a snapshot of William at his friend Bridget’s birthday party. They went to a hot pot place for lunch; William enjoyed it and wants to go back, which I think makes him a more adventurous eater than I am.

Gallery: Orchids and Prom

Christmas 2022

Posted on by

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

Back to School, Julia’s Birthday, and Taylor Swift

Posted on by

After what seems like an eternity, we are finally caught up with pictures through 2014, leaving us to bring you a new batch of pictures from… 2015! Our next post will, if all goes according to plan, cover more recent ground, but this one focuses on one busy month—August 2015—that included the start of a new school year, Julia’s birthday, and Taylor Swift’s visit to the Bay Area.

The new school year was a big one, as it was Julia’s first (and only) year at Willow Glen Middle School. She was nervous enough that she had a friend from fifth grade over that morning so they could experience the whole first-day-of-school process together. Later, Julia would walk to school with friends from the neighborhood, but on this particular day, she wanted all the support she could get.

Mid-month, Julie and Julia took the light rail to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara to see Taylor Swift in concert as part of her 1989 World Tour. Julia had been looking forward to the show for months, and her excitement was captured in photos and selfies taken en route to the concert, while Joe, William, and I stayed at home.

The show absolutely lived up to Julia’s expectations and remains a touchpoint for her memories of middle school to this day. In fact, her big present at Christmas this year was a set of tickets to the Santa Clara leg of Swift’s 2023 tour.

At the end of the month, Grandma Flack flew out to help us celebrate Julia’s eleventh birthday. We had dinner at Benihana and opened presents at home. Julia graciously allowed William to sit with her as she blew out the candles on her cake. During her visit, Grandma Flack stayed in Julia’s room, while Julia camped out on a mattress in Joe’s bedroom. Looking back on it now, it’s a little hard to fathom that arrangement working out, but everyone was much more amenable to that sort of thing at the time.

Mixed in with what is otherwise a fairly Julia-centric set, there’s a cute picture of William with his collection of rubber duckies. I wanted to call this out because he enthusiastically enjoys his duckies even now. Miss Susan, one of our long-time neighbors, regularly hands out ducks at Halloween, which puts her house right at the top of our list to visit when we go trick-or-treating.

Gallery: Back to School, Julia’s Birthday, and Taylor Swift

Annie Kids and Grandma Flack

Posted on by

If you’ve met William, you know that he’s always had an active imagination and a flair for the dramatic. He put those attributes to good use last year, when the Assistant Principal at Booksin, Ms. Brush, started a drama program and put together a performance of Peter Pan Junior. William eagerly signed up and nabbed the part of Noodler, one of Captain Hook’s murderous pirates.

The play was a smashing success, and this fall, Ms. Brush decided to stage another musical: Annie Kids. William auditioned once again, and this time he got a bigger part: Rooster Hannigan, the male antagonist. In the play, Rooster, his girlfriend, and his sister attempt to steal $50,000 from Annie’s would-be adoptive father, Oliver Warbucks, by posing as Annie’s real parents and claiming the reward he had offered.

There were two performances of the show with William’s cast: one in the evening, and one during the school day for the assembled student body. The photo album contains photos from both shows, as well as video clips of William’s scenes. As you can see from the pictures, William attacked his role with great gusto. If you’re interested in watching the full, forty-five minute play, there’s a YouTube video I can share privately.

The timing of the performance was fortuitous, because it happened to be scheduled for the week after Grandma Flack moved to California, which allowed her to attend. The move was a culmination of a two-month process that required Julie to make no fewer than four round-trips to Nebraska and back to prepare. On the last trip, she oversaw movers as they packed up her mother’s things and loaded them onto a truck, and then flew back with her to California.

Grandma Flack planned to move into her own apartment in a senior living apartment building, but that wasn’t feasible until her belongings arrived. So, she stayed with us in the meantime, using our bedroom while Julie, William, and I camped out upstairs; we finally had a chance to use the sofa bed we’ve been moving around since 1994.

Grandma’s furniture was delivered about a week after she arrived in San José, and we took a few days to unpack and put everything in order before she moved in. She’s settling in now and has met a few nice people so far; we’re optimistic that it will be a positive environment for her that frees her from some of the day-to-day hassles of living on her own. The fact that she’s just five minutes away, and will be able to come over to visit as often as she wants, is an added bonus.

Gallery: Annie Kids

Soccer Finale; Walkathon; and Goodbye, Bentley

Posted on by

This time of year often produces busy weekends, but a couple weeks ago, we had a doozy. And we have the pictures to prove it.

The fun started first thing in the morning on Saturday, with an 8:00 soccer game. It was a very successful season for William’s team, the Neon Lightnings, but because schedule conflicts prevented them from entering the end-of-season tournament, this was the last game for this group of kids. William played hard all season, and seems to getting a handle on what he’s supposed to be doing out on the pitch. All that work seemed to be culminating in a clear shot on goal toward the end of the first half—the closest by far he’s come to scoring a goal in a game ever—and he just missed when he tried to kick the ball.

True to form, William was undaunted and kept his spirits up (it helped that his team was winning in a romp). I thought that was likely to be his only chance, as he doesn’t usually get opportunities to shoot, so no one was more surprised than me when, late in the second half, he found himself with the ball in front of the goal once again. This time, he nailed the shot and scored, marking the first goal scored by a Wong kid since fall 2012.

As evidenced by the sheer number of pictures from the game, I had my camera with me. And I was standing near the corner of the field, very close to the goal. But I was too entranced by the unfolding action to even think about taking a photo. As I walked, shocked and elated, back to my seat on the sideline, Will’s friend Kai’s mother asked whether I got the shot, and I just shook my head ruefully. Maybe next time.

After the game, the boys posed together for a quick team photo, and then it was off the next event of the weekend: the 2022 Booksin Walkathon.

This was the first somewhat normal Walkathon in several years. The 2020 walk was canceled due to Covid, and though kids were back on campus in 2021, BESCA and the school weren’t excited about the prospect of having a couple thousand people converge on the school grounds for an all-day event. Instead, they did a smaller, in-school Walkathon with just the students in the spring. Because it had been so long, there was a great deal of anticipation for the return of Walkathon as it had been.

Thanks to the soccer game, we arrived a bit more than hour after the start of the race, and in a change from previous years, kids in sports didn’t get mileage credit for their time away from the school. William was largely unconcerned, however, as he’d asked his friend Kai—who isn’t a Booksin student—to join him for the day. The two of them walked enough to get the first tier of prizes and to earn a cool drink, but they spent most of their time deep in conversation or playing on the playground.

William’s day got even better when he ran into his good friend Kaila, whom he’s known since TK. Kaila left Booksin last year for another school, but she and her family live kitty-corner from the campus and decided to join in the fun. William was ecstatic to see her in person for the first time in ages, and he, Kai, and Kaila spent a long time playing keep-away with another of Kaila’s friends.

After Walkathon, we had a few minutes to rest before Julie had to leave for her flight to Omaha: she was picking up her mother for her move out to California. The flight departed from SFO, as there are no reasonable non-stops from San José to Omaha, which meant a forty-five minute drive each way. By the time I got home, I was thoroughly exhausted; I don’t even remember what happened the rest of the evening.

The weekend wasn’t over yet, however. On Sunday, we were invited to a Navy Change in Command Ceremony, in which command of a naval facility is formally handed over from one Navy officer to another. In this case, the departing commander was the father of William’s very good friend, Bentley; after eighteen months in San José, he was being transferred to a new position in Texas. We were flattered to be invited to the small ceremony, and it gave us an opportunity to dress up, which William always enjoys.

After the ceremony, we stayed for lunch and cake, which the officers’ families cut with a sword—Bentley’s eyes positively lit up when he had chance to hold it. Then Bentley and his family were off to begin their new adventure, starting with a trip to Disneyland, while William and I headed home for some long-overdue rest.

Gallery: Soccer Finale; Walkathon; and Goodbye, Bentley

Back to School 2022

Posted on by

As has been the case for the last thirteen years, August brought the beginning of the school year and, with it, back to school pictures. This year, however, there’s one major difference: Julia isn’t featured. Although Joe’s year at UPA started on August 9, and William started at Booksin on August 17, Julia is off to college at Santa Clara University this fall, and her term doesn’t start until September 18. Nevertheless, the show must go on, so we have the traditional photos in front of the van, along with a few contemporaneous snapshots.

Joe and his friend Caitlin are walking to school together this year, so we asked her very nicely if she wanted her picture taken, and she graciously consented. In lieu of his school uniform polo, Joe is wearing a t-shirt that identifies him as a member of the Link Crew, a group of upper-level students who help eighth graders transition to high school. He and a partner were assigned a cohort of freshmen to reach out to over the summer, and they organized a day of activities the week before school started to help them acclimate and understand what to expect. They will keep in touch with their group throughout the year to help ensure they’re on the path to success in high school.

William dressed up for his first day; he’s working hard to define his “signature look,” as he calls it. He was a little disappointed that more of his friends from last year aren’t in his class, but we pointed out that most of the kids he’s missing now were strangers to him at the beginning of second grade. Considering his track record, he’ll almost certainly have no trouble making new friends in class.

Toward the end of the summer, William took several weeks of swim lessons, motivated in large part by a desire to catch up with his friends so he can join a swim team with them. The last couple weeks, he took lessons from Mrs. Whittell, who was Julia’s fourth grade teacher and has given swim lessons to all three kids. He’s made a lot of progress with his crawl and backstroke, and he’s starting to learn the breaststroke. On the final day, the lessons culminated with an exercise in swimming and keeping yourself afloat in the event that you find yourself in the water with your clothes on. Unfortunately, I don‘t have any pictures from that day, but it’s always fun for the kids in additional to being an excellent survival lesson.

Finally, last weekend, William was very excited to attend a birthday sleepover for his friend Bentley, including a trip to a San José Giants baseball game. He had a great time, but he was a little worried that Julie and I would get lonely without him in bed. To assuage his concerns, he set up a placeholder to keep us company. We all made it through the night, though he was a little worn out when he got home—I suspect sugar and frivolity conspired to keep the kids up later than usual, and they were all up early the next day.

Gallery: Back to School 2022

Julia Graduates from High School

Posted on by

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

Julia’s Senior Prom

Posted on by

Here, we have a small selection of photos from a very big night: Julia’s senior prom. It’s a little hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that Julia is old enough to go to a school dance, let alone prom, but here we are. Earlier this week, I posted this photo of Julia looking glamorous in a fancy dress on Facebook and, truth be told, part of me finds it easier to think of her like that rather than as a young woman getting ready to head off to college.

I didn’t attend my senior prom—as I recall, I chose to spend the evening eating microwave pizza and playing computer games instead, since I didn’t have a date—so I didn’t have much to offer with respect to preparing for the big day. Julia and Julie worked through that process over the last couple months, and I did my best to stay out of the way.

Julia first spotted her dress on a trip to the mall with her friends back in March, and she and Julie returned later so she could try it on, along with a few other candidates. Over the next few weeks, they worked through having the dress altered—it just needed a few minor tweaks—picking out shoes, buying a purse, and finding a necklace to go with the ensemble. The day of the prom, Julia spent the afternoon having her nails, hair, and makeup done so she would look her absolute best that evening.

We have some pictures covering various aspects of the run-up to prom, including some professionally shot senior portraits Julia sat for last week, but we’re saving those for another update: this album focuses on the day of the dance itself.

The evening of prom, Julia invited some of her friends over to our place so they could drive over to the dance together. We picked up a few trays of food so that people could nibble a bit as they got ready for the dance, planning for between three and five friends and their parents. Unfortunately, only two girls (and one dad) could make it in the end, so we ended up with a tremendous surfeit of leftovers. Julie was able to give away some of them through the neighborhood Buy Nothing group; two days later, we’re still working on the rest.

Before they left, Julia and Sierra, one of her friends, added a bit of extra elegance to their outfits with vintage mink stoles belonging to Aunt Julie and Grandma Flack, who generously shipped them to California. The girls then headed off to the dance, with Julie serving as chauffeur. They returned, safe and sound, around midnight, having had a great time.

A brief side note from Joe:

(hi this is joe i am adding this to the document please keep this in)

Gallery: Julia’s Senior Prom

Easter 2014

Posted on by

This week, we’re going nearly eight years into the past to bring you a set of previously un-published photos from Easter 2014. As old as these images are—and bearing in mind that William was barely six months old at the time—their personalities shine through to an impressive degree. In particular, William’s expression of sheer joy at the experience of playing with empty plastic Easter eggs is a favorite of mine.

In more timely news, Joe and Julia are both preparing for the next school year, even though this one is only halfway complete. Joe has signed up for no fewer than five AP classes in his junior year, while Julia is still waiting to hear back from some of the colleges she applied to. She remains very happy that she was accepted by Santa Clara University, as the idea of staying close to home—and Felix—is strongly appealing to her, but it’s always nice to have choices.

For his part, William is very excited to have a very small speaking role in his school’s production of Peter Pan Jr.. He had actually planned to try out for a bigger part, but he somehow didn’t hear when the second graders were called in to audition. He was upset at the time—tears were shed—but he’s happy to have a role in the play.

Baseball season has started up again, and William was glad to learn that he’s on the same team as a bunch of kids he knows from school. It will be hard to top the experience he had last spring, but he’s having a great time so far. My only gripe is that we had a practice at 9:00 this morning, the first day of a long weekend. William didn’t have any trouble getting up for it, but I certainly did. I may have taken a nap when we got home.

Gallery: Easter 2014