Greeting 2002!
Dear Friends and Family,
Michelle
We hope everything is as great for you as it is for us. 2002 has been a quick, exciting, and eventful year. This summer we went to Taiwan and China and had tons of fun! We just got back from Salt Lake City where everyone had a blast.
This year, Michelle (12) participated in the County Honor Orchestra and has several advanced classes. In January, after break, she plans on trying out for All-State and taking her 7th Grade SAT's to see if she can make TIP. But out of all of her achievements this year her favorite has been the fact that she is now the 2nd tallest member in our family. Michelle is taller than both Cindy and Debbie! (Although Debbie won’t admit it.)
Debbie
Debbie is now 16 and has her driver’s license. She is very busy with school, student government, orchestra, clubs, and dance, so having her license makes life a little easier for all of us. Though she is taking many challenging courses such as AP world history, chemistry, and analysis, Debbie also finds time to be active both at school and in the community. She is secretary of the sophomore class, which involves a lot of responsibility and commitment. As a member of the orchestra, she will be going to Savannah in January to participate in a major music convention. Dance is also taking up large amounts of her time, and she has a big performance coming up at the end of January. Despite what Michelle might say, Debbie is still taller.
Paul
Sorry that this is belated greeting, actually, we missed the last one, too.
We missed 2001 greeting because Paul wrote it three times and threw them ALL away. Cindy had the intelligence to instruct me not to talk about politics, let me just sum it up in one sentence: us American like to say: "Since 911, blah, blah, blah!" I do like to point out that 911 is a big incidence; however, that is not the first thing that ever happened!
In 2001, the most significant event was the lost of our beloved grandpa. He left after a morning swim. His strong heart quit when he was in shower. No pain and no time spent in hospital. It is regarded as lucky way to leave without pain, just that we are left missing him without any warning.
It did take Chung-Cheng and friends a while to get hold of us. Actually, it was more than pure luck that they got hold of us. We were leaving everything behind, thinking that we were on vacation and nothing is so important to stop us. It was good that I called Dad the couple of weekends before and had some good conversations. The last one in Dad's diary was: "Son called, he is off to Grand Canyon for vacation."
It happened when we were at Bryce Canyon. Cindy was having problem turning on her work voice mail. By the time she got through her box at Arches, there were the voice mail waiting for us. If she was able to turn on her absent leave message, it would have been two weeks after we are through with the grand circle before we listen to any of our voice mail.
Thank friends and family for the help in funeral. It was simple, his friends came surprised but well experienced.
The biggest thing this year, is Debbie became a driver. It was nerve breaking for us parent to think about it before hand; however, it turned out to be a wonderful experience. We have to give credit to her for being a good learner. Of course, we are also proud that we taught her (I mean, we controlled our emotion in this teaching task)!
Michelle proudly became taller than Mom and big sister. They have been trading or sharing clothes and shoes. Looks like Michelle is loosing this privilege day by day.
We took a trip to China this summer. Please check the trip pictures for what we did and where we went. I will be adding more and more to share our travel experience. And please come back to visit the web site because we will be updating the web site to reward your visit.
A good thing happens to Paul & Cindy is that we picked up meditation. This was a direct result of Paul's getting sick on his lower back after company announced lay-off. We are thankful that we got to keep our jobs. We supported our companies by volunteering some furlough. Back to the meditation, Cindy fixed her digest system problem due to the lost of gall bladder. Paul lost 10 lbs, restored his back and amazingly can eat Kiwi fruit after 16 years of strong allergy response.
Sorry for being late even for 2002. We took a trip to Salt Lake City for Ski. Alta is a nice place to go because Cindy enjoy not having to see snow board (so, Paul didn't get to try break his rib again!).
Wish you all have a better year in 2003. I am sure 2002 is a easy one to beat; however, it should take some smart move for the political leaders to make this simple goal to realize!
A peace loving minded Paul is hoping that peace reward to Jimmy Carter will have some effect toward less conflict in the whole world. Not to mention "war"!
For those of you remember me as Chung, Paul is my childhood name while Chung-Shih is my full name.
Cindy
When we slipped the greeting for year 2001, I have planned to write 2002 greeting during Thanksgiving holiday. Well, that plan didn’t get carried out either. However, we are doing better than the year before, we did in January this time, before Chinese New Year!
As Paul had mentioned, year 2002 is a tough year for a lot of us, my company also went through some staff reduction. I have reduced my working schedule to four days a week since this summer and had truly enjoyed it in the past six months. I get a chance to slow down and enjoy life even though I was running errands most of the off days.
Paul and I are also very involved with high school orchestra. We both chaperoned for New Orleans trip last Spring break and had a lot of fun. Paul is also the web master for the orchestra. We will put in even more time next year for we will be on the board. It is very rewarding to be with these high school kids and definitely worth the time and effort.
Debbie has grown to a young lady; she is a mere copy of myself, only prettier, smarter and much younger! Michelle has emerged from a very happy little kid to a hard-working teenager with a good sense of humor. She often cracks us up during suppertime. They fill up our life with lots of joy!
Wish you a safe and wonderful year 2003!
This page was last updated on 01/09/03.