This is Lanchi and Tuan's annual family letter. Our family photos, as well as an archive of our family letters, can always be seen at http://www.terragalleria.com/family 2008 was another busy year marked by the opening of an art gallery. In April, Lanchi's cousin, Orange county based expressionist painter Dai Truong had informed us of a sub-leasing opportunity for a gallery space inside the Santa Monica's Bergamot Station, one of the best known arts center on the US West Coast. The relatively reasonable rent - that Tuan hoped to pay for just by incorporating Google Adwords (the omnipresent little text advertisements that he resisted using so far) into terragalleria.com - for such a prestigious and sought after location, beautiful space, year-to-year lease, and the prospect of being able to rely on a local partner to staff the place made this venture tempting despite the 350 miles between Santa Monica and our home in San Jose. Tuan had been thinking about expanding the photography business out of the cyberspace into the real world. Lanchi was feeling restless, looking for an occupation more satisfying than taking care of the kids, while not too keen to return to her toxic chemicals after several years away from the field. Because of the location of the gallery, and our partnership with Dai, we would have to operate like an art gallery (as opposed to simply a retail space for Tuan's pictures) which was just fine since Lanchi was enjoying her interactions with artists, while Tuan was interested in having a close look at the intriguing world of art photography. We opened only in late June with an exhibit of Dai's paintings (http://www.tgartworks.com/daitruong/unknown-citizen/). It soon became apparent that this would be a tough business, with much more work than just hanging pictures. At home, artwork has to be selected, cataloged, and framed. Cards have to be printed and sent. Announcements have to be posted to relevant sites and emailed to large lists and to influential contacts, both needing to be acquired and maintained. Press kits have to be assembled. Lanchi, who is doing most of the gallery work, jumped in with both feet and learned a lot by herself, from the business aspects of selling art to making nice-looking custom frames in the garage. The first exhibit was well received but resulted in no sale, partly because we are so new. As the commute from Orange County was also taking a toll on Dai (gas was $4/gallon at that time) and he missed his son, he quit working full-time for the gallery. Despite the change, Lanchi managed to keep things together, bringing in two other people on a shoestring. She put out two more shows this year that were both well received, Tuan's first exhibit ever of his signature project on the National Parks, that utilized fully the exhibit space (http://www.tgartworks.com/treasured-lands-exhibit.html) and then the gallery's first show with an invited artist, resulting in a few more decent sales (http://www.tgartworks.com/raymcsavaney/viewpoint/). With the added commitments of helping operate the gallery (and occasionally watching the kids while Lanchi was busy), Tuan photographed little this year. He just returned to Yosemite National Park for a few days in winter, spring, and summer, working on a book about the Park that, although available for pre-order on amazon.com with an ISBN number, currently appears quite shaky. Despite the total number of images on http://www.terragalleria.com reaching 20,000 (like before, you can download hi-res wallpaper from our site with "friends2009" as both user name and password) not many truly new images were added, since many of them consisted of variations on existing images in large format, black and white, panoramic crops, or a combination thereof. Despite several worrisome indicators, our core internet-based photography business still grew this year (for a eight consecutive year), providing enough extra revenue to finance the gallery venture, as well as new little foray by Tuan into photo book collecting and trading. Tuan fully realized this year how great a medium the photo book was for exploring photography, as well as how valuable it could be as an art object, already reselling many of his newly acquired extra titles for several times the price he paid. Vi-Van and Minh-Dan are now respectively 4 years 10 months and 3 years 4 months. Vi-Van makes wonderful abstract paintings worthy of gallery exhibit, and generally is very perceptive for anything visual, while Minh-Dan is better able to concentrate on mental tasks such as spelling and counting. Besides the marked gender differences (cars vs. princesses), they are very dissimilar in temperament and taste. Despite receiving both a laptop computer that they operate like expert gamers, they are still quite demanding, making our work at home difficult, even though we have help from our baby-sitter Trinh. In September they started going together to the Montessori pre-school in the morning. This was not easy for Minh-Dan at the beginning, since he is used to clinging to Lanchi. A mere month later, they already like to speak to each other in English. They are progressing fast in intellectual ability, asking many questions, and displaying a memory of events, places, and people (they remember Tuong Minh, Tuan's cousin from Vietnam who visited us last winter for a brief period) that sometimes surprises us. Sadly, on the other hand, Tuan's mother is regressing as fast, now often requiring the kind of care associated with a small child, while at times displaying the temperament and paranoia of an adult. Her mind is no longer really present in a consistent and predictable way, but she is still very healthy, despite a two-night December trip to the emergency room, prompted by a short seizure. This was the second emergency room trip of the year, and one for which we had to pay all the bills, since in the US, it turned out not to be possible to find any decent health insurance for a eighty-year old immigrant with a condition. The first emergency room trip was to Yale hospital after Vi-Van and Minh-Dan were found playing with and tasting prescription drugs during the busy eve of the wedding of Lamson (Lanchi's cousin) and Gretchen, for which we traveled to Connecticut for a week. Vi-Van was proud to be their flower girl, although she remembers freezing during the outdoor ceremony. The other long family outing was a road trip to Nevada and Utah during spring break with all of Lanchi's brothers and sisters and their respective families. We bought a big tent to accommodate all five family members and restarted the week-end camping trips with the rest of the "gang" in the summer, but a lot of our beach excursions were in Los Angeles/Santa Monica ... We wish you and all your loved ones a year 2009 (of the ox) full of happiness, health, prosperity, and success, and hope to hear some news from you. Tuan, Lanchi, Ngoc-Thu, Vi-Van, and Minh-Dan (+1) 408-223-8419 3373 Meadowlands Lane, San Jose CA 95135