May in Photos

Ian's Titanic project required a costume reflecting the era

Mother's Day

Not Mother's Day

Lucy's sewing creations

Tiny tadpoles

2012 in Review

We’ve crossed the country every which way this year -- we went over the border to Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, and were within spitting distance of the Mexico border when we visited San Diego. 



We’ve frolicked in the waves of both the Atlantic and the Pacific.



January 1st we were in Ohio and December 31st, in California. 

We’ve hunkered down as Sandy crossed over us, and then put our shoulders to the wheel to help folks afterwards. 

We’ve seen starfish and wild ponies, we’ve hiked among tulip trees and Torrey pines. 

We haven’t had many of the more typically newsworthy milestones, but we’ve experienced plenty of new and wonderful things this year.

Some of our favorite family times this year were exploring the tide pools on the Oregon coast and eating Voodoo Doughnuts when we traveled to the Portland area for the wedding of Aunt Michelle and now-Uncle JJ.

We also loved seeing the wild horses of Assateague Island, as we took our annual summer camping trip as a family. Especially memorable was when the trio of bachelor stallions stole our tortilla chips right out of our trunk and ate them as we watched.

Our least favorite happening this year was finding out that Grandma G. would not be able to conquer her cancer. We did rejoice in being able to spend Christmas with her, though, and hope that her strong, indomitable character will help her continue with us a while longer.

Ian was ordained a deacon this year, and Lucy took the step of baptism. The growth of each of our children -- both physically and mentally -- frequently astounds us. S. and I continue to be incredibly grateful for the true joys we find in our family life, and take seriously our "sacred duty to rear [our] children in love and righteousness". After 14 years of marriage, we feel the constant strength of our love and teamwork even through the nitty-gritty of raising four children and running a household.

Like you, we are often aware of how fragile and uncertain our futures are; like you, we sorrow when tragedies and trials touch our lives. We still hope, however, that we can live as Paul taught, "in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and [being] persuaded of them, and [embracing] them".

Have a wonderful new year, and thank you for being among those we love.

Where We Came From

(That's my mother, first girl on the left, shortly before the family moved from Taiwan to Brazil)

Pictures are invaluable, probably because our own brains don't make them. Storage takes space, even in human memory, and so our efficient brains save only fragments. Thus, every time we "remember" something, we are really piecing together the fragments into a completely new picture, each time filling in the blanks with whatever information and inferences seem most likely at that moment. So it is that, the older I get, the more unreliable my memories of my childhood.

I was raised by young parents. Logically, I know this. In my earliest memories, they must have been younger than I am now, but my mind tends to misremember them as older, filling in the early gaps of memory with more contemporary data. How wonderful, then, that someone had the foresight to take some pictures, so that I might have my memory refuted by reliable evidence that they were once young, their lives still ahead of them, the seeds of their greatness still growing within them.

(My mother and her father)

My sister Michelle recently found a trove of family pictures, each one a new discovery: Here is Dad, a tow-headed little boy in a hand-sewn Halloween costume. Here is Mom, a bright young woman full of Brazilian joie de vivre. Here they are together, newly married, each a complement to the other:

In this life our parents are ever ahead of us, never to be caught, and so we are denied the opportunity to fully know them as peers and contemporaries, courageously walking the labyrinth as we do. Mortality, lived in a single direction, obscures our true selves like a fog, making more poignant those hopeful words of Paul:

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." (1 Corinthians 13: 12)

In these old pictures, I see my parents and know them better than I did before. And look at her, my young mother! Isn't she beautiful?

(Me, Mom and my big brother Bob)

Go West

When I left for college, "home" was an hour from the Pacific ocean. Since then, each of the last four moves has been a move further east until, now, at last, I live about 90 minutes from the Atlantic. This place has been good to us, and it has been good for our kids to set down some roots, but I miss my family and miss the grand landscape of the West. As you may guess, then, last month's family reunion in Utah was many kinds of wonderful.

Big thanks go to Tiff and Kyle for allowing their condo to serve as the principal refugee camp. We got there in time for a little Father's Day grilling.

After performing our carnivorous duty, Mom and Dad's demands for a three-generation talent show were met with singing, dancing (tango and freestyle), piano, guitar, heavy lifting, and Bryce's attempt to get his eyes more than half open (he succeeded, but only just).
Monday was for hanging out, lunch with old friends, and preening for family pictures. We were a fine looking bunch, but you will have to take my word for it until we receive digital copies. How about it, Science?

Tuesday we took an extended family trip through the Salt Lake Temple, which was beautiful and memorable. Many thanks to Koosh, Mish, and Bob for generously allowing themselves to be drafted into babysitting duty--we really appreciated you making the trip possible. We capped off the day with a visit to an old friend of my parents, who hooked us up with some backyard pony rides:


I don't know what's going on here--I think Nora and cousin Erik are planning an elaborate mischief.

In the middle of the week we took visits to Welfare Square, the Humanitarian Center, Temple Square and the observation deck at the Church Office Building. It was great to see some of facilities out of which flow the global work of the Church. I came away understanding a little better the methods and scope of our efforts to do good in all the world.

The last few days of the week were spent largely outdoors, first on a hike up Big Cottonwood Canyon, and then on an overnight trip to Bryce Canyon. With an unusually snowy spring, Cottonwood was fresh and beautiful.
Mish put pet turtle Teancum on a leash and let him get a big taste of freedom. From the look of this picture, Erik also enjoyed riding on Teancum's back:
The water at Donut Falls was glacier-cold, but just about everyone dipped their toes in it.

When we got back from the falls, there was just enough time to engage in a fun new family tradition--Iron Chef. The surprise ingredients were black beans, avocado, cornbread mix and tofu. With three teams competing, everyone stunned each other with their creativity. I couldn't stop snitching from the competition.

The drive down to Bryce Canyon was a little long for a day trip, but full of the awesome landscape I remember. Bryce itself was breathtaking.

Everyone agreed that the hike down into the canyon was well worth it:
However, the kids were less enthusiastic about the 2-mile, 550 foot ascent out of the canyon. They are turning into real hikers, but I'm still going with the "Before" picture:
That night the whole family joined us for foil dinners, baked apples, and s'mores. The next morning I managed to squeeze in a memorable sunrise run along the canyon rim, and returned to find the camp overrun by adorable two-headed monsters:
We finished out the week visiting K's sister in west Orem, affording me the opportunity to look up our old home. It was still there, looking very much the same:
Ian, Johnny and Aiden capitalized on their shared love of Pokemon.

One of the best parts about the trip was meeting three new nephews (Charlie and Alex from my side, Lucas from K's side. Here's K with the latter.

I should mention before wrapping up that all four of the kids behaved surprisingly well on both plane rides, helped immeasurably by Delta's personalized television screens. The trip back was tiring but mostly painless, and our arrival at home was met with gigantic vegetables.
I cannot stress enough how wonderful it was to see everyone. Like our garden, it pleases me more and more to see how the little family our parents started continues to bear fruit.

Victory Lap

I am a firm believer in the the power of If-You-Can-Do-It-I-Can-Do-It. In late April a friend from Charlottesville came to town to run the Trail Triple Crown Marathon in White Clay Creek. I had reached a plateau in my weight-loss goals and was looking for something to spur things along. Well, if you ever want to feel inspired you should go make friends with someone who isn't a professional athlete and then watch them run a marathon. Jennie ran on an unpaved trail, through woods and mud, uphill and downhill, and four hours later came staggering through the finish line, a marathoner. Flat on her back and gasping for air, I'm not sure if she still thought a marathon was a good idea, but I already wanted in on the action. For a first attempt, K. suggested I try the St. George Marathon (mostly downhill), and Jennie had barely caught her breath before I'd put in my registration.

Vacations are more fun when you have a purpose, and the marathon supplied this in spades. It didn't hurt that K. and I had met and married in Utah and still had plenty of friends and family in the area. I flew into Salt Lake the Wednesday before the race and caught up with my siblings in Murray. Thursday and Friday we caught up with more friends and family before making the five-hour drive down to the race. On the way, we stopped off at BYU and were pleased to discover that the bench where I proposed was still south of Maeser Hill:
After picking up my race packet and carbing up on the traditional pre-race spaghetti dinner, we backtracked an hour north to spend the night in Cedar City on what was perhaps the most comfortable sofa bed of my life (thanks, Rosalyn and Dan!). We set--and forgot to activate--the alarm for 3am, but luckily woke up on time anyway:
Full moon or not, it was still plenty dark when K. dropped me off at the bus pickup in St. George, and plenty cold as well. Judging by the leg room, it was an elementary school bus that drove us up into the mountains, 26.2 miles north of St. George, while my seatmate gave me a few pointers about the course. We got to the starting line at around 5:30, where it was all floodlights, loudspeakers, and winds in the 30s. Ditching the long lines at the porta-potties, I opted to sneak off into the dark of the woods, promptly barking my shins on a barbed wire fence. After that there was nothing to do but huddle around the fire for the next hour:
There's probably too much to say about the race itself. My training was so completely solitary that it was a novelty to run with so many other people. One woman ran in a bridal veil. Another man held a digital camera above his head while he ran. I made all the typical rookie mistakes and passed a lot of people in the first six miles, making such good time that I briefly considered pushing myself to see how close I could get to qualifying for Boston. Well, there is nothing like 26 implacable miles to bring you back to reality, and all it took was the first, steep hill at Mile 7 before I reverted back to my original goal of simply finishing at all. Towards the top of the hill my iPod started playing "Chariots of Fire" and a stranger, passing me, told me I was almost there. There is solitude in running, but there is also great camaraderie.

The dry desert air sucked all the sweat right off of my skin, so I made a point to drink water or Gatorade at every single aid station. I tried my first power gel (like thick honey) and gave high-fives to kids holding their hands out on the side of the road. It's a great feeling to participate in something where you feel like part of the main event. Most of the uphill was over by Mile 11, but by then I had started to get a spasm in my right calf that stayed with me for the remainder of the race. It was probably for the best. Fearing that my leg might give out at any minute, I ran more cautiously than I otherwise might have. As a consequence, I never hit the runner's wall and never pushed myself to the point of injury or collapse. In spite of everything, I made a respectable time (3:34:20) and crossed the finish line running rather than crawling:

(I'm the red shirt in the middle)

(and here's a close-up to show off my runner's calves :)

After the finish line you're shuttled through the sprinklers, then get your medal, then shake hands with some veterans in wheelchairs, then get dumped in a holding pen where fruit, bread, and popsicles are pushed into your hands.
I limped it off on my stiff legs for half an hour before meeting up with my support network. I was flattered by all the friends and family who came out to see me, and by the many others who wanted to come and wished me well. You guys are the best.

[Pictured (from l to r): sister Mish, nephew Erik, sister Tiff, nephew Charlie's feet, K. and a very foolish man. Unpictured but adjacent: brother-in-law Kyle, niece Ellie, K's cousin John, John's children Samantha and Tim, John's girlfriend Audry and her daughter, Sarah]

The St. George Temple made a good landmark for regrouping after escaping the crowds. Mom and Dad called for a recap of the race, and then it was back up to Cedar City for a celebratory feast (thanks again to Rosalyn and Dan for supplying the venue).

The aftermath has passed quickly enough. The balls of my feet were really sore, but just for the first afternoon. My hip and knee joints were stiff for the first 24 hours, but by the next day my sister and I were standing in the overflow line for General Conference. Over the last two weeks I've gotten the occasional surprise twinge here or there, but I'll probably be back to running in the next week. My sister Mish ran the Top of Utah Marathon last month and now we want to run one together next year. It's hard to find a fall marathon that's not on Sunday, but we can work it out. Hey Mish, how does Richmond sound?

Last Days of Summer

Dear Teacher,

This is how we spent our summer vacation. We:

-saw cousins

-went to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden

-said goodbye to a pet

-chilled out along the Brandywine

-took a family bike ride

-dressed up

-slipped and slid

-waded into the Huron River

-showed Grandma how to bowl

-ate pancakes every Sunday night

-tended a friend's garden

-camped at Cape Henlopen

-hiked to a salt marsh

-parted the sea

-made an unholy mess of ourselves

-grew a few gourds

-bounded back into school

-camped with the cub scouts at Lums Pond

-got Lucy back into soccer

- and set down roots in a great place.

I'm sure there were some dull and tedious moments in there somewhere, but we forgot to take pictures of those. Is that enough, Teacher? Can we play outside now?