KC Seussical Caberet & Ali Wong, 04May2018

The first week of May was a whirlwind of activity. We had grandparents, uncles, and aunts visit for all of the festivities. Veronica had her dress rehearsals and dance recital. The kids had their Kids' Corner show choir performance. We took my dad and Tita Marlyn to see Ali Wong, the comedienne. Max had a soccer game. Lastly, we had Max's birthday party. This is the first of several posts from that week!

This spring the kids took a show choir class at the after school program. Their performance was a Seussical Caberet. The kids were super excited to have so many relatives visiting to watch their performance. After their performance, Adrian and I took my dad and Tita Marlyn to see Ali Wong. It was quite an experience! Here are a few photos and a video from that day.

And here's a video of the performance!

Click here to see more photos and videos from the show choir performance and Ali Wong.

Jose's photos from that entire weekend can be found here.

Pittsburgh ASME CMU Trip, 18Apr2018

In mid-April, I went to an ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) conference in Pittsburgh to present a technical paper. The week of the conference happened to coincide with the kids' April Vacation week, as well as Spring Carnival at Adrian's alma mater, CMU (Carnegie Mellon University), which is also in Pittsburgh. So I went to my conference and presented my paper, then Adrian and the kids met me in Pittsburgh at the end of the week to enjoy the CMU Carnival festivities. Carnival is a big deal for CMU. It's when all of the alums come to visit. They have a big carnival with rides and, more important, there is Buggy and Booth. Buggy is a race between different organizations (clubs and Greek houses). They make little buggies that are driven by a tiny student and pushed by a team of athletic types. It's a huge deal and alum not only visit to watch the races, but donate to their old organizations to help make the buggies faster and better. We were there with Adrian's friend from work, Dave, and his wife, Nancy. They graduated from CMU a year before Adrian, and Nancy actually pushed Buggy when she was there so she had lots of information to share with us about the ins and outs of Buggy.
Booth is a fancy, double-decker booth also made by the different organizations. My favorite was the Star Trek booth. The bottom level had a transporter that your group could stand in. A TV monitor showed your group being transported with cool graphics. The top level was made into the bridge of the star ship Enterprise. Your mission was to follow the commands on the screen in order to release the torpedoes to annihilate the Romulan Bird-of-Prey. It was so much fun! I was super into it. Apparently too into it because I mentioned to the kids maybe going back there the next day to do it again, and they said, "No!" I think I stressed them out too much barking orders at them. They definitely need to toughen up if they want to get into the Starfleet Academy. Other Booth themes were Hogwarts (we got sorted into Houses electronically!), Narnia, and NASA, to name a few.
Adrian had fun going to his old haunts and showing the kids where Daddy went to school and what he did there.

 Check out the video of us getting transported in the album at the link below.

Click here to see more photos and videos from our visit to Pittsburgh.