There was a holiday performance on his last day of preschool.

Up through last year, he has attended schools that were overwhelmingly Chinese.

Family and friends came together today to celebrate dad’s 80th birthday.

At the beginning of the gathering, I laid out some of his belongings, and, with help from mom and other family members, talked about the significance of each.

I’m now officially the “keeper of dad’s stuff”, much of which includes prints of photographs that dad took. Matthew helped me sort through them last night, and Aram helped me lay them out today for people to look through today.

It was the first time that many folks had met each other.

Here’s a photo of the group.

Clicking on this picture ( showing dad puckering-up to give Chong Chong a goodbye kiss — taken on dad’s birthday two years ago) has a link to these shots as well as some of the prints that I brought to the gathering.

Note: the pictures from Persia are from a trip dad took there in 2010. They were on an SD card I recently found when going through dad’s belongings.

Many thanks to Stacy for making the idea of a birthday party a reality.

Matthew came into town today for my dad’s 80th birthday party. He’ll be staying with us for two weeks. Shanshan took this picture of the three of my kids together. Thirty-five, five, and (almost) eight months.

Strange to think that Xixi’s age would easily put me in the great-grandfather range. (Chong Chong’s as well… depending upon how Southern one gets.)