It's time for my annual "collection of pictures posing as a Christmas letter" post. Our biggest news for the year is that we took a big trip to the Mediterranean this summer with my parents (our holiday card picture is from this trip, taken in Venice), but I'm going to rip through a bunch pictures chronologically (it's just easier that way), so those pictures won't show up until the middle of the post. Note that several of the pictures are actuallyy galleries where you can click through multiple pictures with the left and right arrows on the pictures. Anyway, let's get started...
We went ice skating with some friends at Sharks Ice during Christmas/New Year's break (which isn't really that significant an event, but I liked the picture of Steph and the boys):
Hayden and Steph went up to the Napa Valley for a weekend at the end of the month. We did some wine and champagne tasting, had lots of great food, and visited the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art:
We went skiing in Tahoe (Heavenly) for a few days during Presidents' Week (which has become a tradition for us it seems, or at least 2024 will be our 3rd year in a row doing so). The conditions were pretty nice the first day, but it got very cold and windy by the end of our trip:
Steph let herself get talked into completing a mural in the zen garden at Evan's high school that the parent booster club started a while ago, so that's what she spent a lot of the boys' Spring Break doing (with help from some volunteers):
Also around Spring Break Hayden had to travel back east for work, and he went to a Washington Nationals baseball game with some co-workers and got to see Testudo, the University of Maryland mascot (they were playing the Orioles)!
Later in April Evan broke his nose in a soccer game when a kid on the other team tried to do a bicycle kick and instead kicked Evan in the face! This picture was taken a week or so later after his surgery (really more of an outpatient procedure) to reset his nose once the swelling went down. You'll see in later pictures that it looks totally fine now, and he was a real trooper through the whole process. ;-)
With all of the rain we had in California this past winter one of the geocaches we placed in the past was apparently washed away, so we took a short hike one weekend to replace it:
Everyone had a birthday this year (Hayden turned 49 in May, Evan 16 in June, Steph 47 in August, and Alex 14 in October), and since we're up to late May on the timeline I'll insert a gallery of all of our obligatory cake pictures here:
Also in May (over Memorial Day weekend) Steph went to Santa Barbara with some friends for a girls weekend away:
In June Evan went away to a week-long engineering summer camp organized by the National Youth Leadership Forum. The camp was on the campus of Georgia Tech, so Hayden and Evan flew to Atlanta to do some sightseeing (visiting the Georgia Aquarium and Centennial Olympic Park) and get him setup in the dorm for a week on his own. He then got to fly home on his own, which was a first for us!
Just before leaving on our big Europe trip we went to the Alameda County Fair with Steph's cousin Lauren and her partner Jorge, and we got to meet a very special pig:
Then it was time for our European Adventure!
We flew from San Francisco to Venice, Italy (by way of Rome), where we met up with Hayden's parents and spent 2 days:
We then took a train down to Ravenna, where we boarded a cruise ship to sail the Adriatic, Ionian, and Aegean Seas over the course of 10 days.
Our first stop was in Trieste, Italy:
After walking around Trieste for the morning we hired a taxi to drive us to Slovenia to see the Škocjan Caves, which were totally awesome!
The next day we were in Koper, Slovenia, where we rented electric bikes and cruised along the Adriatic coastline and beautiful valleys and vineyards:
Day 3 found us in Hvar, Croatia, where we went sea kayaking for the day:
Next we visited Kotor, Montenegro, where we did more sea kayaking (paddling on back-to-back days wasn't our smartest plan ever, BTW) and walked around the beautiful old town:
After Kotor was Corfu, Greece, where we rode buses around town and walked around the old fort:
On the island of Santorini, Greece we took a bus to Akrotiri (a Doric trading village that was buried in ash in 1600 BC) and a winery, then walked through Fira and down the Donkey Path back to the dock (the line for the cable car was super long):
Next we went to Mykonos, Greece, where we took a short boat trip to Delos to tour the ruins there, then walked around the town of Mykonos for a bit:
After our one day at sea on the cruise we went to our final stop of Dubrovnik, Croatia, where we took a tour of the old walled town and some of the near countryside:
The cruise ended up back in Ravenna, where we said goodbye to the grandparents (who were flying home) while we took a short flight to Rome for another week. We didn't arrive in Rome until early evening, so we got settled in our apartment (which was a few blocks from the Spanish Steps), then walked around the neighborhood a little bit before bedtime:
On our first full day in Rome we took a bike tour around the city center, seeing most of the big tourist landmarks while we hurried from shady spot to shady spot (Southern Europe was in the middle of a record heat wave while we were there!):
On our second day we took a train down to Pompeii to spend the (extremely hot and humid) day at the Archaeological Park:
Back in Rome the next day we went to Vatican City and the Leonardo Da Vinci Experience museum:
On our last day in Rome we went to the Pantheon, then the Colosseum and the Roman Forum:
And for good measure, I took portraits of each of us at our last dinner in Rome:
Barely a week after we got home Steph got back on a plane to North Carolina to teach for a week at the Pocosin Arts School of Fine Craft:
And then it was time for the boys to go back to school, first Evan to 11th grade:
And a week later Alex to 8th:
The weekend between the boys' first days of school Hayden's sister Hilary and her family came to stay with us for a few days on their summer trip to the west coast. We spent a day walking around San Francisco with them, among other things:
Hayden and Steph spent a weekend in Mill Valley for our 21st anniversary, where we got do so hiking at Mt. Tamalpais and Muir Woods:
Steph had a few art events to attend at the end of September, including the gala for the San Jose Museum of Art, where a collector commissioned her to make a fur bra she could wear to the event (Steph first made a fur bra years ago, but it wasn't meant to be worn):
And a show in the gallery of Evergreen Valley College that was organized by a friend of hers:
We spent the first week of October (both boys' Fall Breaks... that's a thing in our local school systems now) in Southern California doing college tours with some family friends who have boys in the same grades as ours. We visited:
In addition to all the college visits we also got to see our niece Delaney and her boyfriend John for dinner, Steph's friend Penny and her husband David (and toured David's research lab at UCSD), the San Diego Zoo, and Steph's Aunt Lisa and Uncle Bob:
The day after we returned home Steph flew tp the east coast again, this time to attend the International Sculpture Center conference in Jersey City, NJ. After the conference she got to spend a few days with her Sister Kim and her family in Park Ridge, NJ, which included a trip to the Dia Beacon Art Museum and a girls' night in the city to see The State:
Two final art-related photos.... First, Steph and Hayden attended the annual fundraiser for The Belle Foundation at the end of October, which was being held at the house of a couple who've collected a few of Steph's pieces, including her first Hanging Pod (the test piece she made before working on InTouch):
Speaking of InTouch, Steph has recently started work on another huge installation piece for a solo show at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara next September, which she's calling In the Glow. One of the intermediate steps towards creating the main piece is a 1/4 scale model carved out of Styrofoam, which she'll use to lay out patterns over that she can scale back up to make the full piece (which will be 4 times as big!):
Here's a final snapshot of the family for good measure from just a few weeks ago, making cookies for Thanksgiving:
2023 was certainly a busy year for us, in a good way. We hope it was a good year for you and yours, and that you have a wonderful holiday season and coming year!
