Our family  photos, as well as  an archive of our  family letters, can
always be seen at http://www.terragalleria.com/family

Although in 2021 things did not turn out as well as we hoped, we made it through the second year of the pandemic and hope you and your family are well too. 

We gathered for Thanksgiving, but with the emergence of Omicron, opted for an outdoor Christmas lunch (brrr!) and no reunion for the Tet (Vietnamese lunar new year). We were saddened that Lanchi's father John Vo passed away on June 23, 2021, at age 88. John had multiple health issues. At the beginning of the year, he was hospitalized for kidney failure. Upon his release, he continued dialysis at home. When he appeared stabilized, a pulmonary infection required hospitalization again in the spring. On his last evening, the entire family drove to the hospital, but because of the newly emerged Delta variant, the hospital protocols would not allow more than two people at his side. The rest of us sat outside of the hospital, watching his last moments on Facetime. 

This passing away brought Lanchi's family together even more. After returning from the memorial service (https://terragalleria.com/family/be/), Lanchi's brother Nhon proposed to his long-time partner Ana. The number of household members went down to 6: our family of four, Lanchi's mother, Lanchi's brother An. However, we found ourselves sitting 10+ for dinner regularly. After all those years, we figured out the advantages of having a communal dinner with extended family members taking turns each day of the week to cook for the rest. The drawback was that all those tasty food adds to the pounds gained during the pandemic. To comfort and provide companionship to Lanchi's mother, sisters took turns staying at our place while working remotely - except when needing to self-quarantine after possible Covid-19 exposure, they underwent quite a few tests. This also means that we now have three not-so-well-trained dogs roaming the house. Lanchi's sister Lan Thanh and her husband Brent sold their home in Livermore, hoping to downsize and move even closer to the rest of the family. They are still looking for a new property amid the red-hot real estate market. In the while, they live next door with Lanchi's other sister Landai. 

The only persons often missing from the extended family dinners were our children. We joked that they don't need to do anything to self-quarantine, since their default behavior is to stay in their rooms with doors closed all day. Besides watching videos, Minh-Dan enjoys playing video games with his friends, but is usually in bed at reasonable times, unlike Vi-Van who chats, plays games or watches a movie with her friends late into the night. 

At the beginning of the year, Vi-Van loved to go on long bike rides to the other end of the town to see friends. She asked for rides only when running late or when she bought her guitar along. She wanted a summer job at a nursery because of her interest in plants, but ended up working at Pizza My Heart, a restaurant not too far from home - which happened to have some of our favorite pizzas. She was wary of interacting with strangers and took the job partly as an effort to overcome that fear. It eventually worked out well, but for the first month, the four-hour shifts burdened her with heavy, unusual, day-long stress. With her paychecks, she bought a computer for gaming, indulged in vintage fashion, and Garfield the Cat merchandise. Her senior year has been a busy one, with four advanced placement (AP) classes, dynamic relationships, a break-up, a part-time job, multiple hobbies including music and baking, college applications, Covid scares, plus a death in the family. The pressure overwhelms her into passivity at times, but with some nudging, she often managed to catch up with daily chores and school work. Vi Van has always been interested in visual art. She sketches, draws, and paints whenever she can squeeze some time out of her busy schedule. She finally decided to follow her passion and major in the Arts. 

Minh-Dan had been struggling to maintain motivation through the virtual school, needing ever more strict supervision to complete his homework, not to mention other unhealthy behaviors like vaping. In-person school suits him better, so we were relieved that it restarted in August. That also allowed him to get a bit of physical exercise. He joined the tennis club and hit with friends. He continued to cook for himself elaborately, shopping for fancy steaks that to Tuan look ridiculously expensive, but that Lanchi finds very tasty. He turned out to be a meat lover, avoiding any uncooked vegetables or fruits that he says make his throat itches, just the opposite of Tuan, a vegetarian. We were concerned that his unbalanced diet would stunt his growth, but this year he underwent a significant growth spurt and is now taller than Lanchi and Vi-Van, although still very skinny. He continues to build high-end mechanical keyboards that support his remarkably fast typing. Given his taste for luxury items such as gourmet food and collectible fashion, we welcome his plan to aim for a business career. 

The year was also rather similar to 2020 for Lanchi, who continued her routine of getting up at the market opening. However, having invested in dividend-yielding stocks, she had less cash available for day-trading. Tuan found out that the hottest "plantfluencers" social media stars can barely manage a collection of plants numbering in the hundreds, whereas Lanchi grows thousands, putting her on a different level. Admittedly, her Lithops and Conophytum are tiny, but this year she started to take an interest in African Violets and Streptocarpus, which at least have showy blooms that are eye-catching enough for Tuan. Towards the end of the year, a fellow artist invited her to join the cooperative Main Gallery in Menlo Park, which prompted her to return to her lathe. 

Tuan and Lanchi were pleased to reconnect with the Sierra Nevada, where they had started backpacking a quarter-century ago. Last year, Nhon organized a John Muir Trail hike but we did not join, since his schedule of 20-mile a day seems too ambitious. This year, he restarted where the previous group had bailed off at Kearsarge Pass. With a more reasonable plan of ~10 miles a day, 44 miles total, 12000 feet elevation gain, and the promise to carry food and collective gear, Tuan convinced Lanchi to come, although she had not gone on any backpacking trip since the birth of the children. That southern section is demanding: it offers no escape routes; the trail’s altitude is consistently high. Hiking in early June, we were concerned about dangerous snow-covered sections. Fortunately, the snowpack this year was one of the lowest. In those dry conditions, forest fires subsequently raged in California, but this year the San Francisco Bay area was sparred. It wasn't until November that the rains restarted, after which we resumed day hiking locally to enjoy the green hills.

Time on the trail was a good break for Tuan, who had not gone on a non-photo trip since the summer of 2017. He also drastically cut his travel time this year, going only for a week to Southern California to complete his last project, and of course, to West Virginia for the latest national park, New River Gorge that he found very worthy. The end of 2017 brought the reductions in size to Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. In response, Tuan had started a project centered on at-risk national monuments. He wished to raise awareness of those lands which are lesser-known, but no less beautiful and diverse than the national parks. By June 2021, after six extremely busy months of writing and designing, he had finished the work on this new book, Our National Monuments, which was released in November. Besides the missed opportunities from public promotion events, the extra publishing costs directly linked to the pandemic added up to mid-five figures. A large chunk of it is the inflated ocean freight costs for both of his books. Still, our year was benign compared to families who suddenly lost loved ones to Covid, or experienced more financial hardships. I hope that you are doing well. May the new year brings all that you had hoped for but didn't happen in the past two years. 

We wish you and all your loved ones a lunar year 2022 (of the tiger) full of happiness, health, prosperity, and success, and hope to hear some news from you. 

Tuan, Lanchi, Vi-Van, Minh-Dan, Peanut 
3373 Meadowlands Lane, San Jose CA 95135 (+1) 408-706-0894