2018 was another wonderful year of family, friends, and personal growth. Katie (4) is in her last year of preschool, Ellie (6) is thriving in first grade, and JooYeon went back to school after a 6-yr gap. After three years of renting (from a wonderful landlord), we are once again homeowners -- this time of a cozy townhouse near EMU.
A Journey to Start the Year
We began the year with a trip out to the Portland area to visit JooYeon's sister and her family. The four cousins were eager to engage in lots of laughter and games. Hide and seek, Monopoly, and Legos were the crowd favorites, although most of the giggling stemmed from the spontaneous play that arose. A highlight for me was a trip down to Salem where I had the unique honor of my first "sleepover" in a decade or so, with my lifelong friend and EMU roommate Kyle Miller.
Sister besties. Ellie and Katie are rarely on mediocre terms. They tend to either poke each other's weak spots or (much more often) explore life as best friends. The two year gap readily dissolves as long as they are well fed and well rested; people regularly ask if they are twins.
Firsts. Looking back at pictures from the year, I realized how many things our girls had learned. JooYeon and I had talked a bit about self-confidence a year ago, and set a goal of giving each of the girls (especially Ellie) two new skills that they could feel good about. As it turned out, those goals, were easily shattered with rollerskating, dancing, swimming, reading, swinging, sewing, and pottery among the new skillset. The general pattern was that both girls would work on something, with Ellie putting in a bit more determination early on. However, as soon as Ellie would learn how to do something, Katie instantly went all out so as not to be left behind. :) A good example of this is rollerskating; although Ellie learned first, Katie quickly became a little whirwind on the skate floor and won a prize by getting first place in a roller limbo contest.
Owen et al. JooYeon and I are blessed to be surrounded by so many people who just radiate love to the girls. One of those is the Chair of our math department, Owen Byer. Our girls' eyes widen with excitement at just the mention of Owen's name as he plays animated games and tricks with them whenever he sees them, regardless of how much work he may have piled up on his desk. My favorite story was one day at lunch in the EMU dining hall. Katie was eating an ice cream cone and Owen was sitting across from us. Out of nowhere, Owen mentions how fun it would be to take Katie's ice cream and rub it around her face. Through a bit of a miscommunication, Katie said that he would have to pay her $20. Owen reaches across the table and puts the ice cream cone on her nose and then rubs it around her face. Katie sits there silent for a bit, but her eyes soon light up when -- true to his word -- Owen puts $20 on the table and hands it over to her!
The "et al." part there could be 100 people or more, as it feels like the entire community here in Harrisonburg is ever willing to embrace a childraising role momentarily. For example, the EMU students decorated the dorms and then did activities with children on Halloween.
Daddy (Mommy) - daughter dates. Although we love to do things with our family, our extended family, and our friends, we also enjoy creating one-on-one moments with our girls. I had an abundance of special lunch dates this semester with Katie, as JooYeon took a Federal Taxation course during lunch time.
Performances. Our girls have always been drawn to performances, whether it's watching them in YouTube, in person, or doing their own mini-performances in the living room at night, there's something alluring about a person or people having everyone's undivided attention. This year, we saw Sound of Music, Shrek, and they even got to see their cousin perform in a touring version of Sleeping Beauty.
Ellie had her real performance debut in front of a couple hundred people with a speaking part in a summer play about dinosaurs at the end of summer enrichment camp week. This, of course motivated Katie, who later volunteered for a speaking part in her preschool's Christmas performance.
Even JooYeon got in on the action with a starring role in her hospitality committee's song for the church!
Friends and relative friends! When Ellie was about 2, JooYeon and I had a phase of overanxious parenting as we worried whether she would ever make friends. Whenever other kids came to our house she screamed at them if they even got close to any of her toys. Sharing was a four-letter word, and taking turns wasn't much better. Upon moving to Harrisonburg, JooYeon made it her mission to expose Ellie to as many other kids as possible to help her learn to socialize. In any case, we no longer have fears about Ellie -- she's constantly surrounded by laughter and many wonderful friends. Katie's getting there a bit more slowly, but she also has at least a small handful of solid friendships. Of course, it helps when Katie and Ellie have more than a few cousins in the area!
Stuff.
JooYeon continues to find creative ways to play with the girls. Here's a day where we stopped at a store and bought some dry ice to experiment with.
Dad was honored by EMU as a member of the original intercollegiate baseball team (the others here are from EMU ball players from years since).
Dad had a few medical tests done this year -- not only has he handled things well, but he has been a master walker. JooYeon and I never cease to be amazed when we check his step count on his FitBit. He often has 10,000 steps (~4 miles) by the time we wake up in the morning and has gone as many as 10 miles on his best days. A highlight of my year has been the weekly morning walks Dad and I take together.
Family grows! Since we didn't make it to Korea recently, JooYeon's brother flew in from Korea to see us instead. He was a huge help (as were a couple of my close friends) in helping me with some needed renovations to our new place. JooYeon's sister and kids flew in from Oregon to spend another vacation with us as well. With one of our three bedrooms out of commission during the renovations, the 8 of us became quite close!
To give Kiwi the full EMU experience, we went dumpster diving together; he became an expert and we had quite a score one night!
Grandparent time! Mom and Dad moved to the area two years ago to be closer to grandkids (our girls and Heather's), and WOW, have they ever fulfilled that intention. I'm not sure a single week has gone by since then when our girls haven't had some special event, craft, or hang out time with Gma and Gpa. Here is just a tiny sampling of some of the activities they've done together.
The climax of grandparent time was our family trip where mom and dad took us and Heather's out for a beach trip in the Outer Banks. They took care of everything to give our generation some time to relax and the younger generation another set of memories. Every night, Mom would choose an ocean-based theme and then read a story and had some treats for the girls following the theme.
There are some incredibly talented students at EMU as evidenced by their performance in contests like this or this.
But the real thing that distinguishes the students is their heart for others. When I tell a joke in front of the class, it's always a toss-up as to whether I'll get some laughs. But when I give students an opportunity to serve others using mathematics, I can consistently depend on students stepping up and investing a wholehearted effort. Below, a couple of students present their use of graph theory to design a set of biking routes for a new nonprofit, Soil Cycles. To underscore this point, the founder of Soil Cycles, Nidhi Vinod, is also an EMU student and was happy to attend a couple math classes to explain the needs and help critique the proposed solutions.
Much of my efforts in teaching go into making math/stats/programming more interesting and relevant
to students. Here's a little informal article I wrote about some of the changes I've made in my teaching in recent years. With all the math talk floating around, it's no surprise that Ellie and Katie know how to approach decisionmaking in our household in a way that scores them some points. :)
Completely removed from my math-teaching responsibilities, I'm the faculty liaison for EMU's collaboration with Mennonite Partners in China. Each semester, a group of Chinese Scholars lives on campus and takes classes to get a taste of our education style and the broader cultures (Mennonite, Harrisonburg, and the U.S.). I've been blessed to meet many wonderful friends through this program!
Closing. As always, there are fairly large portions of the year that these pictures don't cover. I'm not the best at taking pictures, so I often rely on pictures that others take and send me. But I do think they convey the general idea -- that the girls are center stage in our lives right now, and that we are in a place with wonderful community of family and friends.
