Category Archives: William

Fall Firsts

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It’s the second half of August, and for the last thirteen years, that’s meant one thing to us: it’s back-to-school time, and we have the pictures to prove it.

The gallery contains the traditional first-day-of-school shots in front of the car, of course, but it also includes a few others, including William jumping for joy at some exciting news; Joe absolutely wiped out after his first day of senior year; and William’s first soccer game (hence the somewhat forced “Fall Firsts” moniker for the photo album).

The year is off to a fast start. William seems to be enjoying fourth grade with his teacher, Mr. Tejada. He’s especially interested in the class reading goals: if everyone reads 40 books by May, the whole class gets a party. William is already almost halfway there.

Joe is working with his small ensemble on some pieces they might play at band competitions in the spring. He’s also enjoying having an open first period on Mondays and Wednesdays, which lets him get an extra hour or so of sleep. If anything, he’s enjoying it a little too much: there have been a couple days in which he cut his arrival at school for second period a little close.

His relaxed mornings may not stick around for long, however. He’s planning to take vector calculus at a nearby community college, and the section he wants meets at 6:30 am. He’s currently on the waiting list for that section, but if he gets in, it will mean lifestyle adjustments for all of us.

Julia’s plans for the fall are still somewhat up in the air, but we’re hoping to have a more concrete idea of what she’ll be doing imminently.

Gallery: Fall Firsts

Orchids and Prom 2023

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gallery: Christmas 2022

School Pictures 2022 – 2023

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This school year, with Julia off at college, we’re down to two sets of school pictures for the first time since William started preschool. They’re a little later than usual this year because William missed his original picture day while we were in Nebraska in the fall. Then, there was a mixup with his order, and it was lost in processing until we wrote the photographer to ask about it last month.

Nevertheless, the pictures are here now, presented for your enjoyment.

Joe's eleventh grade school picture

Will's third grade picture

The photos embedded in this post are small, low-resolution copies of the kids’ portraits. You can find the full-size pictures in their dedicated galleries.

Galleries: Joseph, William

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

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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

Summer 2014

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We’re all at home for the week between Christmas and New Year’s—this wasn’t originally the plan, but the reason we’re all here is a story for another day—so it seemed like as good a time as any to post another batch of pictures, this one from the second half of the summer of 2014.

A lot was happening that summer. As he approached his first birthday, William was becoming a very interactive member of the family, and though he wasn’t talking yet, he was quite happy to listen to himself squawk and squeal. You can hear examples of his delighted exclamations in some of the video clips contained in the gallery. A number of these arose from Joe’s experimentation in the world of documentary filmmaking; his work is featured prominently here.

Julia had a busy couple months, as well. She and some other girls from school did a week-long “friends camp”, in which they spent one day at each of the girls’ homes. This let the girls’ parents exchange four days of relative freedom for one day of utter madness. Later, she spent a week at Camp Campbell, as was her custom until she increased the length of her stay to two weeks in later years.

After we dropped Julia off at camp, we stopped at the park surrounding the Felton Covered Bridge on our way home to break up the long drive. The bridge itself was once the main entry point to Felton and is the tallest covered bridge in the United States. A few years later, in 2020, the entire community of Felton was evacuated due to the CZU Lightning Complex fires. The bridge and park were not damaged, but nearly 1,500 buildings were destroyed, and both Camp Campbell and Roaring Camp Railroads, which we’ve visited a number of times, were in real danger.

Gallery: Summer 2014

Gold Country and Father’s Day

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Our most recent photo gallery, which isn’t actually recent at all, is another throwback to 2014. This set covers a short trip to Gold Country in the Sierra foothills at the beginning of the summer of that year, just after the kids got out of school.

Julia had completed a unit on the gold rush during the school year, so she was excited to share various historical tidbits about the region. And, thanks to the power of marketing, Joe had been asking to go see Mercer Caverns ever since we visited the Mystery Spot: he kept seeing orange Mercer Caverns bumper stickers around town that bore an uncanny resemblance to the ubiquitous yellow Mystery Spot decals, and logically concluded that Mercer Caverns should be next on (or at least high on) our list of sites to see.

We spread the trip out over a couple of days, starting in Murphys, where the big kids panned for gold while William was content to just splash in the water. Sadly, they didn’t find any, and we then headed into Mercer Caverns themselves. I was carrying William on my back in a hiking baby carrier, which made things interesting: his head stuck out several inches above my own, so I had to be conscientious to avoid braining him on a low-hanging stalactite.

All five of us made it out alive and intact, and we headed next to Calaveras Big Trees State Park, which features the first giant sequoias documented by European explorers. This includes the stump of the Discovery Tree, which was once the largest tree in the grove, but was felled just a year after it was first documented. The stump was then used as a dance floor, and bowling alleys were constructed on the fallen trunk, much to the irritation of John Muir; in response, he is said to have written an essay titled And the Vandals Danced upon the Stump.

We snapped a picture of Julia and Joe standing in front of the Pioneer Cabin Tree, which featured a tunnel carved out in the 1880s to allow it to compete as a tourist attaction with similar trees in Yosemite and elsewhere. Sadly, in preparing this post, I learned that this tree fell during a rainstorm in January 2017, less than three years after our visit.

The next day, we visited Moaning Caverns, which was, if anything, a more impressive spectacle than Mercer Caverns. Once again, I had to be mindful of the risk of decapitating William, but for the second day in a row, he survived.

After we finished spelunking, we stopped at Railtown 1897 State Historic Park and Columbia State Historic Park. The former included the train from the movie Back to the Future III, which may have interested me more than the kids. We toured the area by rail, which was a welcome respite after all the walking we’d done over the last few days, did a little more panning for gold—still coming up empty—and enjoyed some cool drinks in a tavern before we packed up and headed home.

The gallery closes with some pictures from the construction of one of my favorite Father’s Day gifts ever. Julie had the kids make signs calling out something I did for them (William had help) and composited them into a small poster that sits on my dresser to this day.

Gallery: Gold Country and Father’s Day

Joe Turns 8 (and More)

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Although things have been busy the last few weeks, we are still working to shrink our extended backlog of older photos that have yet to be posted. With that in mind, here’s another gallery of pictures, this one covering Joe’s eighth birthday, as well as a few days on either side.

A few things stand out in these photos: William has graduated from eating puffs (or puffies, as we called them) to toddler crackers, which he loved; Joe’s cake topper is fantastic (though I’m biased); the older kids got Nerf swords that Joe and William still play with today; and Joe received a handsome sweater vest that’s now in William’s dresser.

Looking back, it’s a hoot to see our old kitchen and living room in their glorious disorder. Things are a bit calmer and neater now, but these pictures warm my heart, mess notwithstanding.

Gallery: Joe Turns 8 (and More)

Annie Kids and Grandma Flack

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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

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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