FF cross stitching and sewing

Lately FF has been in this craze to stitch and sew. She is loving it and mom is fully supporting her. In fact, a member of the English ward Sister Sharron Barnum, loves FF so much for her interest in cross stitching so much that she showed FF all her personal work, which has a lot of sentimental value as well as monetary value.




































Even SS got in the mood to stitch stuff himself.







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Brennan's acceptance to Poolesville High School

As Brennan is growing up and making many choices that will impact his life, he is faced with decisions that he have to make himself. One of the first and important decisions is what High School he wanted to attend. He has a lot to contemplate comparing the pros and cons of each school: whether to attend local high school where they have a really good band program, other extra-curricular activities, and close to home or attend Poolesville HS where they have a very strong academic program but they don't have other extra-curricular programs, and is farther from home, and there will be longer class days which means he has to stay at school longer.

CC has always had a very strong academic background. Since he was about to start school, we got him into the Chinese Immersion Program at College Gardens ES, then we moved him to Fox Chapel ES for the Gifted and Talented (GT) program. After that, he didn't like the local kids where they were teasing him all the time. So for middle school we decided that he will attend local MS school instead of continuing into the GT middle school, which would have been not very good for him. In the local MS, he just excelled him almost all of his classes and wasn't challenged enough, even in honors classes.

As he is graduating from MS, he has to make decisions for the next four years. For high school, we encouraged him to take the Magnet Program test. We figure this is a good benchmark for him to see how much material he knows. On December 2017, he decided he would take the test. He didn't think much about it and didn't even study nor prepare for the test, where as we see many other students in the county actually took extra courses on the weekends and have specialized classes to prepare for them to take this exam. We didn't think much about the exam: if he gets accepted, he will think about it and if he doesn't he still can go to his local HS.  On the day of the exam, there was literally hundreds of students going there to take the exam. When Da went to pick him up, he waited for a very long time because CC took his time to answer each and every question and wrote essays as needed. He was one of the last twenty kids to come out of the examination.

Well to our surprise, in February 2018 we finally received the results back from the test. He did really well on the exams and was offered to both programs at Poolesville HS. Now it is up to him to decide to accept the acceptance letter or not. It took him about two weeks to process the pros and cons of whether or not to go and he still couldn't make a decision. We tried to encourage him to go because the environment of how students will be similar to him and how good it could for him, however we also told him that it's his decision and we will support either school he chooses. He waited until the day Poolesville had a student orientation for all the accepted candidates so they can meet the current students and teachers to see how the program maybe beneficial for him. Within the hour and a half after meeting the students, teachers, and seeing the environment, he submitted his acceptance letter and was excited to attend the school in the fall.

























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Da's shoes and an unforgettable note

So what appears to be an innocent post about my basketball shoes turn out to be a great sentimental moment. I've been playing basketball for year with a pair of shoes. The shoes laces on the shoe have pretty much torn off but I keep tying knots on the laces to keep them in place. It came to a point where one of the ball player's wife, Nikki, can't stand looking at my shoe laces and decided that they bought me a pair of new shoe laces, which is green!

I posted the sentiment on Facebook showing off my new laces. Well one of my former young men youth, Alvin Ye, saw the post and decided to do something even more extra ordinary. He decided to donate his own pair of shoes that he barely worn, another pair of shoes that were almost new too, and the most sentimental valued gift was the card in the package. Of all the youth that I've taught over the years and many of them have since gone to college and some even have their own families. I know they all appreciated all the fun we had together, but not of them took time out of their busy to just want to thank me. I don't expect anyone to do that but this little gesture has a really nice meaning and a lot of sentimental value. He even took the time to write in all caps, using a rule to make sure his whole letter was leveled and neat and tidy. Below is what he hand wrote in all caps.

Da,

I want to first congratulate you on getting accepted to a master’s degree/education at (from what I can tell on your Facebook picture) University of Maryland! Welcome to being a kid again hopefully. It’s awesome that your company is willing to pay for it and that you are taking the next step forward in your career. I know that you’ve worked really hard and heave been doing your best for your family!

In the box you will find 2 pairs of shoes, one pair of basketball shoes and a pair of running shoes. Both are size 9 so you might need thicker socks if you wear a size 8. Da, I am glad you posted that picture of your shoe, that was an opportunity for me to show you in my return for all the things you did for us as kids.

 I can only at the moment provided shoes yet I hope to pass on your leadership and caring love to more youth that I lead one day! You were so patient and caring to me and I was younger whether it was playing basketball, picking me up, seminary, cookouts, camping, service, or a number of things. You were always so selfless and that is one of your best traits. Those cookouts for everyone when we returned from college were probably some of my most fondest memories next to camping out at the Foulger Farm.

Thank you again for everything you did for me when I was young. It truly meant a lot and helped shaped me into who I am today. Enjoy both pairs of shoes and promise me that you'll school some youngins! Best of luck in school! Your family is extremely lucky that they have you. I know I was. 

Sincerely,
Alvin














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2018-03 Chinese New Year at church

This is from our Branch's Chinese New Year Celebration program. FF is a dancer again with the other girls. She did great! The boys...are missing in the photos, they are just everywhere not seen.










































You can see all the other photos from the CNY party here.

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Da's schooling and absence of posting blogs

This is just to log as a journal. Going back into late last year, Abbey and I had a discussion whether I should go back to school or not. We discussed the pros and cons of going back to graduate school and how we can juggle our super busy schedule to see how this new scheduling will fit in. Since the kids are older now and pretty much self reliant, we think it would be a good idea that I pursue graduate school studying Cybersecurity at the local university. I purposely chose a school that is close to home and would only take one class to attend one night a week to balance work, home, and the kids schedules.

Upon taking the course, it has occupied quite more time that Abbey anticipated. With this grad school class the amount of studying, paper research, going to class, and even joining a club is taking a lot of time from what I used to do. I used to write letters to missionaries, update the family blog quite frequently, and spent time playing with the kids at home.

However now, I am home doing my homework or studying while the kids are doing their homework or practice their music. I think it is good they are watching me studying and they don't have a reason or excuse that I am not doing anything and they can't get away with saying that dad's sitting around doing nothing.

Since I haven't been back to school in 15 years, I've lost touch with many aspects of studying habits and how to take exams. It was hard at first to get back in the swing of concentration and studying and writing papers. The first exam that I took, I failed miserably not knowing how to taking an exam anymore. So for the writing assignment I took a lot of time to figure out how to research my paper, how to use proper formatting and referencing and citing the materials, then I took a lot more time to put the paper together. Finally I went through at least a dozen websites to scan the paper to make sure the grammar, the citations, and formatting are correct to the college standards. Lastly I asked Ben Tsai, a college professor to proof  my paper to make sure everything looked proper before submitting the paper.

This past two weeks was very nervous for me. We had a midterm and since I failed the first exam miserably, I do not want to repeat it again. I changed my study habits, read, re-read, wrote down notes, read my own notes, and repeated many many many times to make sure I got the materials memorized and understand. The day of the midterm exam, I took half a day out of work, went straight to school, found a study room and just studied for six hours straight for the exam. I left the classroom with a much better feeling than the first exam.

Due to spending so much time studying, I postponed many of my other usual tasks that I would regularly do such as posting on this blog, writing to missionaries, and even doing household chores.

I do hope to do good in this class so I can continue to finish this degree. This is the first class out of ten to get a total of 30 credits to graduate. We will see how I will continue to progress.

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