Letter

Since I can easily put lots of pictures in an online letter, that's what I'm going to do.  In fact, this is going to be more a series of images with captions than an actual letter.  If you want to you can read our letter from last year and everything I said then pretty much still applies.  Here are some of the things we did this past year....

We visited Hayden's sister in Santa Fe, NM for Christmas in 2013.  Here are Evan and Alex getting ready to go sledding one day:

From there we drove to Denver, CO to see Steph's sister for New Years.  Here are the boys with Aunt Kim, Uncle Bill and cousin Lola at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science:

In April Steph started renting a studio at a new arts space in downtown San Jose called the School of Visual Philosophy.  Here are the boys helping her move in:

And here's Steph showing some friends her new space:

Steph was also invited to show people her work as part of the opening of the new Skulls exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences.  Here she is manning (womening?) at Night Life at the Academy:

In May Hayden turned 40(!), and Steph and Hayden went to Monterey for the weekend and then did a ropes course in the Santa Cruz mountains on the way home:

In June first Alex graduated from preschool:

Then Evan finished 1st grade (this picture was taken at his end-of-the-year dance event, where the 1st graders performed a dance to "In Summer" from Frozen):

In July the boys learned to play the train game (I swear it was their idea once I described how you play the game):

We visited Steph's parents at Lake of the Pines just after the 4th of July:

It was a particularly dry summer in Northern California on top of a run of dry years.  The percolation ponds close to our house where we used to take Peekay most days are almost completely dry, so Steph took the boys on a walk where they did some nature drawing of the exposed pond beds:

In August we visited Steph's oldest sister in Newport Beach for a long weekend.  While we were there we went to Legoland with cousins Delaney, Riley and Paige:

Later in the month Hayden and Steph ran the Ridiculous Obstacle Challenge 5k race at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds (this picture was taken after the race next to the bubble machine):

And, of course, the end of August brought the first day of school, Evan in 2nd grade and Alex in transitional kindergarten (he missed the cutoff for kindergarten by 1 month):

In September Hayden and Steph went on a 14-day cruise through the Panama Canal for our 12th anniversary (Hayden's parents came to stay with the boys while we were away).  We started in Los Angeles, CA:

Then went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where we did some snorkeling at Las Islas Marietas, a marine national park a half hour or so outside the city:

Next we went to Puntarenas, Costa Rica, where we went ziplining in the forest canopy outside town:

After Costa Rica our ship went through the Panama Canal, although we didn't actually set foot in Panama:

The day after the canal we spent in Cartagena, Columbia walking around the old part of town:

And then the day after that we were in Aruba, where we went snorkeling off a pirate ship:

The pirate ship included a rope swing (as pirate ships are wont to do), and after our 3 different snorkeling stops we got to jump off the swing a few times:

Aruba was our last stop before the end of the cruise in Fort Lauderdale, FL, but we had a lot of fun on board, winning scrapheap boat building competitions:

and going to nice dinners (Hayden is eating escargot here), among other things:

After the cruise we spent a few days in the Florida Keys, going snorkeling in Key Largo and spending the day in Key West before flying home:

I put pretty much all the pictures we took (a few hundred altogether) online on Flickr, if you're interested in investing some browsing time.

As soon as we returned we had to put the finishing touches on Alex's 5th birthday party (his actual birthday happened while we were in Aruba):

A week later one of Hayden's indoor soccer teams won their league championship and one of Steph's roller hockey teams (we play at the same facility where the boys also play soccer) did the same:

For Halloween we first had to get our pumpkins:

before our bat and robot went trick-or-treating:

We went to Newport Beach again for Thanksgiving, and took the opportunity to take our family picture for our Christmas cards:

And that's pretty much it.  We had a nice 2014, and we hope you all did too.  Happy Holidays!

Letter

Reading through some of the Christmas letters we've already received, I was struck by how much can change in a year.  New houses, new jobs, new kids.  We haven't really been the best at keeping our friends up-to-date with what's been going on in our lives (I just checked and I haven't written an honest-to-goodness Christmas letter since 2007!), but rest assured that none of those big events have been happening to us, just people we know.  We've only experienced an accumulation of life's little shifts and changes that you don't necessarily notice day-to-day, but taken together add up to a pretty good year.

Alex is four years old and goes to preschool at the church around the corner (the same preschool his older brother attended at the same age).  He plays soccer, takes swim lessons, builds LEGO creations a kid twice his age would be proud of, and has developed an unhealthy preoccupation (dare I say obsession?) with Angry Birds in all its many forms.  Alex considers himself to be quite the young photographer, and has recently branched out into cinematography as well.

Evan is six, and is in 1st grade.  He really likes school, and is something of a teacher's pet (he inherited brains from both of us and Steph's joy of following the rules).  During his summer vacation Evan got to attend a few different week-long camps, including a LEGO camp and one focused on building things (like bridges out of tooth picks and play-doh and cool paper airplanes).  He's also a soccer player and swimmer, shares his brother's fixation on Angry Birds (they share a lot of things), loves loves LOVES to draw, and is going to run out of teeth at the rate he's losing them.

Steph (age withheld) spends every hour she can manage in her studio, which is unfortunately not nearly as many as she would like (raising two little boys will do that to you).  She continues to work almost exclusively in felted wool and show around the country, but has been developing a new body of sculpture over the past year or so that is similar to some of her previous work but significantly larger.  She conducts workshops intermittently around the Bay Area, and spent a week this summer teaching at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.  Steph also plays roller hockey 2 or 3 times a week in a few adult leagues (which actually started last year, but since there was no Christmas letter...) and regularly has the bruises to prove it.

Hayden is rapidly closing in on the big 4-0!  He still works as an engineer at Northrop Grumman and has been primarily on the same project for over 6 years now (in the Special Intelligence Operating Unit, which is... "special", I guess).  This year he also contributed to a few business development efforts (which means no one in the government is willing to pay for them yet) which was an interesting change of pace.  Hayden doesn't have to travel that often for work, but when he does he usually takes the opportunity to do something fun (like spending a day snowboarding after a conference in Utah) or visit friends and family (like seeing college friends outside DC or his sister Hilary in Allentown, which is also fun) along the way.  He plays on a couple different soccer teams, both indoor and outdoor, throughout the year.

And last but not least (well, actually she is least, which is why she's last and didn't make the Christmas card) Peekay turned 10 years old this year and is still going strong.  She doesn't get taken on walks anywhere close to as often as she did a few years ago, but some days I think she's perfectly OK with that.  She is continually mellowing in her old age, although the neighborhood squirrel population and the mailman would certainly disagree, and she enthusiastically provides slipper delivery service anywhere in the house (to Steph at least... I refuse to give the dog a treat for getting slobber on my slippers).

Our boys spent the first week of summer vacation with their grandparents in Phoenix (yes, you read that right, we shipped our children to Arizona in the summer, which might be viewed as child abuse in some states) and loved it.  While Mom was away teaching in Tennessee, Dad and the boys spent the week taking fun day trips to places like the Oakland Zoo, Emma Prusch Farm Park, and Berkeley Adventure Playground (if you don't know what that is check out the web site -- you will be amazed that such a place can still exist in modern America).  We spent the week of the 4th of July at Lake of the Pines with the Goetsch clan, and sandwiched a day in Legoland and a 3-day cruise from Los Angeles to Ensenada, Mexico around Thanksgiving with the Davisons in Newport Beach.  We'll end the year visiting Hayden's sister Hallie in Santa Fe for Christmas and Steph's sister Kim in Denver for New Years, and sprinkled throughout 2013 were numerous visits to Happy Hollow, the Children's Discovery Museum and the California Academy of Sciences.

We hope 2013 was kind to you and your family, and 2014 is better still.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Bath Rumble

After Alex's bath tonight Evan joined in for the bundling and drying phase, and the three of us got a bit tangled up in the process:

Chicken Wing

I can't for the life of me remember what prompted this, but after dinner tonight Evan came up behind Alex while Steph was holding him and started flapping his arms like a chicken:

Then he gave Alex a big hug (that actually isn't so unusual):

Alex didn't know what to make of any of it:

D Bunny

I don't remember if there was anything more going on here than Evan playing with D Bunny ("D" because his cousin Delaney gave it to him), but I like the picture a lot so I thought I'd share it:

Visiting Terrapin

My best friend from college, Katy, came out to the Bay Area for a conference this week and she stayed with us for a few days afterwards. As is our way, we hardly turned the camera on the two days she was here, but we did take this one picture of her with Evan:

At least in the only picture we took he was wearing the Maryland shirt Katy brought for him (it's one of his new favorite shirts).

Obviously you can't tell from a single photo, but Evan had a great time having an extra person to play with around the house! Over the last few months he's become much more willing to interact with new people, and he took to Katy right away. He even requested she join in with our bedtime ritual of reading a story, saying what we did that day, and singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. That was the first time either Steph or I can remember anyone who wasn't a family member or his regular babysitter participating in bedtime, let alone at his invitation.

Running Man

I know I've mentioned before how much Alex likes to kick his legs. Well, as you can see, he comes by it honestly:

More Car Lineup

Evan spends a fair amount of his time lining up cars in nice rows, so we have plenty of opportunities to take pictures of him doing it. These pictures start to become a bit repetitive, but he looks so cute we can't help ourselves:

Take Your Bow

With all of the enthusiastic dancing Evan does he needs to learn to take a little credit for the entertainment he provides every once in a while:

Potty Practice

We've been working on potty training Evan a little bit at a time over the last month or two. So far there are four main challenges we're facing:

1. He is pretty unwilling to go pee in the potty unless we're changing his diaper anyway, at which point if he wasn't wearing a diaper it would already be far too late;
2. He insists on standing up to pee, so the degree of difficulty is a little higher;
3. He likes the idea of pull-ups and big boy underpants but resists even trying on either; and
4. He vehemently refuses to even think about going poop in the potty.

The first three issues are all things we feel like we can make progress on, but on the fourth he's been quite recalcitrant. We now consider it a victory just to get him to sit on the potty even to read a story (which should be good practice for pooping, right?):