Let's Go Fly a Kite!

Dahin (left) and Ronan (right) really took to kite-flying. Dahin loved running with the kite up the hills and Ronan was quite methodical, pulling in and loosening the string to control the kite. The windy conditions at the Marina make kite-flying a perfect activity. Plus, the weather was just perfect. I've never experienced such warm day at the Berkeley Marina, where, even in summer, it's usually chilly.

At the Marina

Here we are at the Berkeley Marina at Cesar Chavez Park. You can see San Francisco and the Bay in the background. The weather was very warm, in the 70s in the morning and in the mid 80s in the afternoon. We were out all day long; kite-flying and having a picnic in the morning and early afternoon, beach-going in the late afternoon, and a potluck dinner in the evening. It was a very full Saturday! See more pics above.

Happy Birthday Apa!

We celebrated Jack's birthday way early in the morning. Dahin had a camping field trip with her school and would be gone for two days, so we decided to have the party in the morning (which explains Jack's bed-head :- o ). Yes, we had cake for breakfast, but it was fun!

Family Tree

Here's a picture of Ronan holding the family tree Dahin and I constructed for her class's immigration unit. We decided to focus on her dad's patrilineal line as well as mine (naming conventions make this way easier than tracing the matrilineal line). We couldn't quite get all the names in Jack's family all the way to the family's roots in Changnyeong, but found some cool information. One bit was about a famous relative who was a favorite scholar of King Sejong (which means Jack's family was, at one time, elite) and worked with him to create the Korean script. He also tried to kill King Sejo and for that is known as one of the "six martyrs." Oh well--can't all be good! Thanks to the diligence of Dahin's grandfather and great uncles, we have a complete patrilineal line of descent from our branch of the Finchum family's arrival in this country from England in 1740. The two Fincham brothers arrived aboard a ship in chains (having been arrested for poaching on royal property) and served 7 years of indentured servitude before breaking free and settling primarily in North Carolina/Tennessee and beginning a long line of mountain men and moonshiners. Yee-haw!! Who says history ain't interstin'!

Brother Love

If this is not proof that these little guys are best friends, I don't know what is. How cute is this!

Ok. My kids are just wierd. The things they do are just beyond explanation. I guess that's the fun of it. My friend Pam came over for Easter and, to kill time since my fabulous feast took FOREVER to cook, she led the kids in a quest to look up their names in a dictionary. Oliver and Dahin's names were not found, but they found Ronan's. It did not explore the meaning of his name, but rather descibed a medieval Irish king who murdered his son. Ronan, the king, it appears was fairly infamous for this act. Well, that led to a barrage of questions as to why the king killed his child and why, exactly, did I name Ronan after this king. Explanations, beginning with the phrase "ok, I didn't name him after that king," were not good enough in their eyes. They have since scripted a play, complete with dramatic soundtrack from the Casio, in which Ronan plays his namesake, Oliver plays the son, and Dahin plays the mermaid who helplessly watches on the sidelines. Thank you, Pam.