2006 was relatively  uneventful with the kids keeping  us so busy that
we had to switch back to the lunar calendar, and still a week late.

Minh-Dan turned out to be a more difficult baby than Vi-Van.  Until he
was eight month old, he would wake  up in the middle of the night, and
demand to be carried around.   Just holding him while seating, or even
standing in one place wouldn't do.  We had to walk around. We tried to
ignore him, but he would throw out terrible tantrums that could easily
last  one  hour, after  which  we  would give  up  so  that the  other
occupants of the  house could get some sleep.  He  generally has a bad
temper.   He  would cry  and  bang his  head  against  the floor  when
something is taken from him, either because he shouldn't play with it,
or because  his ill-mannered sister likes  to yank his  toys.  We were
hoping that  with their close ages, the  two of them would  be able to
play together,  but instead  they often end  up fighting  together for
toys or food.  Guess we have to wait a few more years...

Feeding was  another difficulty. He refused the  bottle completely, so
Lanchi  had  to  breast-feed  him,   eventually  with  the  aid  of  a
supplemental system when  her milk ran out.  Still,  he was not taking
in enough milk and was not too keen on solid food either.  During that
time, his weight  dropped from the 90th percentile  at birth, to lower
than  5th  percentile.   The  doctors  panicked.   After  a  dozen  of
specialists and series  of tests, the final verdict  was: forget about
fruits  and vegetables, feed  him french  fries, chicken  nuggets, ice
cream, those greasy, carb-ladden food that one normally tries to limit
from a baby's diet.  Well, it worked.

By contrast, despite the doctor's orders, Vi-Van is still stuck on the
bottle, an  addiction difficult to  break since she wouldn't  eat much
besides. Recently,  Minh-Dan has turned  into a better eater  than his
sister, trying  and accepting  a wide variety  of foods,  even papadum
galettes from  India that  Lanchi's parents find  too spicy  for their
taste, whereas Vi-Van just says  "Cai, Cai", which means in Vietnamese
"hot, hot" when she sees the package.

We didn't realize the speed of  Vi Van's transformation from a baby to
a pretty little  girl until we worked on our  online family album that
you   can  check   at   http://www.terragalleria.com/family/  She   is
fun-loving and vocalizes a lot, although it wasn't until recently, and
with the  help of a therapist,  that she made  significant progress in
speech.

Despite missing  her home and her  routine, Tuan's mom  stayed with us
until April.   At the end  of January, Tuan  and her traveled  for ten
days to Southern California, a break from the winter and the screaming
kids.  In April, Tuan took her  back to Paris. Although he had been to
England  several times for  academic activities,  he didn't  have good
photographs, so  he planned to take  a week to  remedy this situation.
Tuan's  mom was interested  in joining,  since she  had never  been to
England.   All hotel  and train  reservations  were made,  but at  the
Saint-Lazare  station  mom's  was  denied  entry. Although  she  is  a
permanent  resident  in France,  as  a  non-EU  national, a  visa  was
required (which  was not the case  for other EU  countries).  The visa
delay was too long, so Tuan  had to go by himself.  An Englishman with
whom Tuan chatted on the train apologized on the behalf of the Queen.

The first  family trip  of the  year consisted of  a week  in Orlando,
Florida.   It  was fun  to  share  a  pool-equipped rental  house  and
activities with  the families  of Lanchi's three  sisters. A  total of
eight kids were running around all  the time. We also had a great time
meeting Lanchi's  aunts, uncles  and cousins.  We  spent a  nice Eater
lunch together, a party of almost  40 people.  Thanks to our aunts and
uncles,  we got  free Disneyworld  tickets, otherwise,  it  would have
costed a fortune  to get the whole gang  pass Disney's door.  However,
because of  the long lines  that invariably last several  times longer
than the attractions themselves, the  frenzy crowds, the heat and lack
of shade, our first theme park vacation did not leave us wanting more.

On the next  two family trips, we rented a mini-van  and drove to more
relaxing  destinations with  Lanchi's  parents. In  August, when  most
other places in  the country would be too warm, we  took a 10-day road
trip to  Oregon to sample the  variety of the state,  from Crater Lake
National  Park,  to  otherworldly  geological formations  set  in  the
sparsely  populated eastern  deserts, the  lush Columbia  River Gorge,
Portland, and a long drive along  most of the length of the coast. For
a change from all this driving, in September, we based ourselves for a
week in a time-share condo  near Lake Tahoe.  Unfortunately, we didn't
know that it  could be very windy  there at this time of  the year. In
the end, although  Vi-Van loves the water, we  had less beach sessions
and more day trips to Nevada towns.

Tuan also went  on two photography trips.  At the end  of June, he was
invited to join the Ken Burns crew during their filming of Glacier Bay
National Park  on a chartered  boat. The opportunity was  difficult to
pass: instead of spending a week  on a kayak, this time he didn't even
have  to pack  a water  bottle.  Since  he was  already in  Alaska, he
continued  to  Anchorage,  to  revisit  two  of  the  Alaska  National
Parks. He planned to paddle  the Northwestern Fjord, which is the most
beautiful in Kenai Fjords (while it  is more easy to access, its steep
walls make  it even  more impressive than  those in Glacier  Bay), and
hike the  Bagley Glacier (largest  non-polar glacier in the  world) in
immense Wrangell St Elias National Park. Unfavorable conditions caused
him to change his plans to a boat tour and a sightseeing flight.

In contrast  to that  wilderness trip, during  the first two  weeks of
November, Tuan traveled to the South-Eastern states. While the initial
goal was to complete his coverage of Congaree and Hot Springs National
Park, he  ended up  completing a wide-reaching  trip of 3000  miles to
fill in  the gaps in his  files, visiting eight  states, four national
parks, and a dozen of cities.

At  home, Lanchi  was way  too  busy with  the two  demanding kids  to
consider returning to work.   However, thanks to a little baby-sitting
help, she managed to take care of her greenhouse, which was in a state
of neglect since  the birth of Minh-Dan, and  even to resume acquiring
new  plants  and creating  new  digital  photos  for a  possible  book
project.

In February,  Tuan installed a  large format digital  printer.  Inkjet
printing has  come a long  way in just  a few years.   High-end inkjet
photo  printers have  little  to do  with  their office  counterparts:
prints as large  as 44 inch (1 meter) wide can  be produced with image
quality  and   longevity  better   than  those  made   by  traditional
photographic processes.  For a  relatively affordable price, the Epson
9800 let us produce at home prints that previously would have required
a printer, such  as the Lightjet, that takes up most  of the room, and
costs in excess of $150,000.

The first  large order of prints  came while Tuan was  away to Europe.
They always  seem to come at  those times.  Lanchi  struggled with the
new hardware,  but eventually  managed to produce  the prints  just in
time for Tuan to sign and pack the prints during the night between his
flight back from  Paris and the next early  morning flight to Florida.
Eventually, she  would improve her digital file  preparation skills to
the point  where she would  be able to  give Tuan much needed  help by
preparing most of the print orders.

Despite  switching   officially  to  part-time  status   at  SRI,  not
accomplishing any significant work there  with only two days per week,
Tuan still did not manage to  find enough time to work on his National
Parks book project.  With the  time available, he could barely keep up
with the day-to-day  operations of the growing business,  and the need
to maintain and update the web site.  For instance, in February, as he
was exceeding his 500GB/month  bandwidth allocation (1 million monthly
visits), he had to move terragalleria.com to a new server. Despite its
apparent  simplicity, the  site  depends  on quite  a  complex set  of
software packages.  In  June, a newly discovered security  hole in the
subscription package was  used by at least a  dozen different malicous
hackers trying to compromise the  server. While some just erased files
at random,  others installed insidious  software to be used  for shady
activities. You can  imagine that cleaning up the  mess and preventing
new intrusions was tricky and  time consuming. By the way, speaking of
subscription, like  the previous years we  are pleased to  offer you a
free account  for downloading our computer wallpaper  images: both the
username and password is friends2007.

We wish you and your loved ones a Year of the Pig full of happiness,
health, prosperity, and success, and hope to hear some news from you.

Tuan,  Lanchi, Vi-Van, and Minh-Dan  (+1) 408-223-8419
3159  Ravenswood way, San  Jose CA 95148,  USA