Christmas Letter 2010

Happy Holidays!

"Evee, you get down from there!!", Jess exclaims.  Evee, is teetering with her feet on red, purple, and yellow Dora powerwheels seat with her hands against the kitchen cabinets.  Jess dashes over and catches her just in time saving her from enjoying a beautiful face plant into the hard wood kitchen floor.  Jess is surprisingly nimble for being six months along with our family's newest addition.  Uncle Nathan is over and we are cooking spaghetti on a fairly typical Thursday night for dinner.

Last year's Christmas letter described so many new things, big changes, like Evee being born, me starting a new job, and Jess working part time.  You would think things would settle down a bit but as it turns out, 2010 has ushered in even more new adventures.  I'm typing this letter from our University Place abode which we shopped for and purchased this past year in preparation for our growing family, getting into a good school district and just for a little more elbow room.  Evee's just a couple months away from being two years old.  She talks and jabbers continuously now and has an awesome sense of humor in my opinion.  Just the other night she heard Miara (our cat) knocking over something in the other room causing a ruckus.  She tells Jess, "Ooooh nooo.  Maaya knocked it dooown.  Time out." thus scolding her kitty.  Some of her other fun phrases are, "no waaay duude", "oh gooodness", and "i love momma/dadda".

New hobbies this year for me have been mostly centering around settling into our new house.  Oddly, I found fixing up the sprinkler system here kind of fun.  Hiring a company for the purchase of and installation of a new heat pump just in time to keep it breezy for the summer time.  The release of Starcraft 2 and my new Fender Stratocaster has helped me to relax at home when I'm not hanging out with the girls.

We've already hosted a couple of fun get togethers with family and friends but not nearly enough.  It's our hope that this Christmas letter finds you in good spirits, serve as an update for those of you we don't get to see as much, and an invitation to come see us more in 2011!  Once again, may 2011 be a year of good cheer, with health and happiness to all of you and yours.

Love,

Quoc, Jess, Evee, and baby #2

Merry Christmas!

Dear Friends and Family

I write “Merry Christmas” to you all while watching one of my favorite holiday films, “The Thin Man.”  It is the moving 1933 murder mystery of an inventor solved by a married couple who spend 80% of the film with martinis in their hand.  Ok, so it is not, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but it still set during the holidays.  Evee is reading a pop up version of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas on Sesame Street” and Quoc is dancing with the extension ladder hanging holiday lights.  So I guess we are in full holiday mode.

2009 has been a whirl wind of change as all of you can imagine.  I’ve gone to work part-time, Quoc started working for a new company here in Tacoma, Miara, our cat is now allowed to go outside and everything Evelyn does is new.  As soon as Quoc and I catch up to one of her routines she goes and develops a new one.  Recently she has learned not only to walk but how to break out of the many configurations of “child proof” gates we have set up throughout the house.  She escapes from gates and diapers.  Although with all this change going on I’m finding it difficult to really write much more because it seems like we are constantly updating people about Evee with daily photo e-mails, facebook status updates and youtube videos.  So I think I’ll just make a bulleted list of reflection of our first years as parents:

-         Breastfeeding is good important and the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life

-         Cloth diapers are pretty easy

-         Quoc’s Asian propensity for photo taking has only been fueled and reinforced

-         Creeping up on 30 with a baby has added inches to our waist lines

-         World of warcraft has been replaced with youtube video’s of elmo

-         We’ve quickly become aware our 2 bedroom house with one closet needed organization creativity

-         We own the most patient cat in the world who doesn’t mind a cat’s tail used as a teething toy.

-         Balancing work and home is much tougher than I expected

Quoc and I hope we do not turn into a couple who are only able to talk about their child, but I think its fairly inevitable the first year of the first baby.  Perhaps the best thing we can say about Evee is that in October she was given the all clear by her neurologist with the prognosis that it is very unlikely she will have any long-term complications from her early fight with meningitis.  To everyone who gave their prayers and support during Evee’s first month with us we are truly grateful.  May 2010 be a year of good cheer, with health and happiness to all of you and yours.

With love,

 

Jessica, Quoc, & Evelyn

Checking in

Boy, it's been a while since I've posted here to quoc.org!  Well, Evee is growing so fast.  She's about 10 months now and is healthy as ever!  This past month she has now learned to walk and is cruising around our house getting into everything.  She gets a lot of picture traffic through the quoc.org mailing list and facebook so if you want more frequent updates, shoot me an email and I'll add you.

More Evelyn Videos!

Some more Evelyn Videos!  Evee is laughing pretty hard here.  At this point in her age she is entertained with the appearance and disappearance of eye contact.  Daddy is looking away for a brief moment and doing a very subtle and quick peak a boo with just his head direction, eyes and a small sneezing sound.  Works like a charm!

Grandma Sandy bought this Jumper for Evelyn and she just turned 4 months this week so she's allowed to use it.  Daddy cranked up the jams and recorded her "hanging out" and having fun!

Evelyn laughs with her daddy!

It's been a while since I've posted and the last time I posted Evee was very sick!  Today I'd like to joyfully report that Evelyn is doing great and has passed all the developmental tests so far.  It's likely she'll no long lasting effects from the Meningitis.  To show you what I mean, I"ve posted a video below; my favorite milestone so far, her laughing with me!

If you look carefully you can see Jessica in the background diligently doing dishes and freezing breast milk that she so diligently pumps every 3-6 hours. What an amazing momma!

Evelyn 2 months old

Evee at 2 months!  Facebook album, check it out.  Click on the pic below.

Evelyn 1 month old

Evelyn turns 1 month!  Here are some pictures of that first month.

Evelyn - Meningitis

Hey everyone,

All tests are in and the doc says there is an excellent chance here for full recovery!  After that rough Friday of 3 Lumbar Punctures and the PICC IV, the hospital team decided they'd let us have a full day's rest on Saturday.  Evee continued to have temperatures all day Saturday but beginning this morning, she actually maintained non-fever temperatures without Tylenol.  You can tell she's feeling much much better.

Here's a couple pics of Evee and Jess. 

Quoc

Evelyn - Meningitis

Hey guys,

Today was a pretty rough day for Evee.  Early in the morning, we were scheduled for a Lumbar Puncture (LP) that didn't succeed.  They stick a needle in your spine to extract out the liquid in your spinal column; although local anesthetic is administered, they have to pin Evee down on her side in fetal position in order to try.  Since this failed, they gave Evee a break then they had to try again at noon. 

With the second LP not only were they unsuccessful at it again, they scheduled the PICC IV just before.  The PICC IV is where they stick you with a needle in your vien and feed a tube that will run all the way in close to your heart.  They are putting this in so that when we go home we can administer the anti-biotics intravienously for efficiency.  They stuck her in her upper right arm first and that one didn't work so they went up and poked her near her wrist.  After they put the IV in, they have to X-Ray her to make sure the IV is in the right place.

Just to add to the merryment, Evee also gets a rectal temperature taken every 4 hours.  Jessica thinks she now has a phobia of diaper changes because of this; she shrieks every time we change her diaper.  Finally, in the afternoon, Evee gets her third Lumbar Puncture.  The good news is they can get out a sample.  The bad news is just after the LP they find out the IV is too close to her heart so they have to pull it out a couple of centimeters.  So she's pinned down once again to adjust that.

We're now into the night and Evee's back is pretty sore from the LPs.  It's gonna be a long night but well, I think it was all worth it.  The results from the LP are now 3000 down from 12000 white blood cell count.  Which means have made a lot of progress on killing E coli in the meningis now.  Also, the PICC IV is a lot more comfortable than the shallow one she had on her left hand.

If all goes according to the books, it should be more down hill from here.  We've gotta get through tonight for Evee's back pain and hopefully a couple more days fever free.  We'll be here at least until Monday.

I will continue to send updates, but starting tomorrow, things should be a bit more mellow.  Feel free to give me a ring if you wanna say hello.

Love,

Quoc

Evelyn - Meningitis

Hey everyone,

First off I just wanted to say that Evelyn, Jess and I are so grateful for your love and support!  We feel very well loved with you guys offering to help.  Momma, thanks for the Com and Goi Cuon.

Today Evee was in and our of fevers lingering in between 100.3 and 101.9 degrees today.  Which is actually a good thing at this point in the game.  Doctors say that her having those fevers means her body is fighting off the bacteria.  We have confirmed that two of the bloodwork tests have come back negative which means the E coli bacteria has been eliminated from the blood.  It takes special antibiotics and time for them to penetrate the spinal column and meninges so tomorrow morning we will have another spinal tap done to get a status on how the antibiotics are doing on the actual meningitis.

Some really good news is that today we got a cat scan on Evee's head to see if any bacteria or white blood cells had made any pockets in her brain.  The result came back all clear which is a huge relief.

Even though Evee's still aching and running the fevers, Jess and I are really glad to see that at time during the day when the Tylenol kicks in that our baby is acting like the baby we knew for the first 9 days.  Boy, being a parent has become quite the adventure already!

Quoc

Evelyn - Meningitis

Hey guys,

So, here's another status. The doctors have identified the bacteria that is associated with this spinal meningitis and it is E coli.  Meningitis is life threatening but at this point in Evee's treatment and progress has gotten her out of that category.  Evee is responding well to the antibiotics that they started on her early on.  Also, this E coli doesn't have resistances to any of the antibiotics that they are administering.  The big take away at this point is that the swelling of the fluid in the brain can cause long term developmental complications.  At this point, that's our biggest concern.

How is Evee doing.  I've been with her since that first day and it's amazing how many messages you can start to pick up from the way they cry and behave.  The first day, she was lethargic and pretty much couldn't wake up.  She had a fever and would have very weak crying that petered off into constant weak moans.  You could tell that any movement caused her to ache as she would cry hard then moan.  She also would not eat that first day, once we got to the hospital they hooked her up to an IV and also late that night, she chugged a bottle of pedialite pretty hard.

Over the past day she's actually been feeding on momma's milk again along with the IV.  She now takes mommy's bottle every 2 hours and gives good healthy burps, poops and pees.  She's still very achy to moving around but they've been giving her some tylenol which has helped her to relax and sleep a bit more.  It still breaks my heart to feel her with the the 100 degree fevers.  The doctors do say that during her fight this week she'll be in and out of these fevers.

I'm trying to be as descriptive as possible, Jess is a lot better about describing all the facts.  As with the first 9 days, days and nights begin to blur.  On top of that, this ordeal has seemingly turned hours into days.  Since we got into the hospital Monday afternoon, it's now been almost 48 hours.  To me these past two days has felt like an eternity.  As mom, dad, craig and sandy saw, I was literally cracked in half the first day at the thought that I could lose Evee.  But today, I'm hopeful that she might make a full recovery.  And if not that, I am humbly greatful for Evee even with some developmental issues in the future.

Grandpa Craig is great at making jokes to lighten our hearts.  He says that if Evee does have hearing loss in the future, they'll learn sign language together as his hearing is not so great as well.

We're hangin in there, we are trying to keep visitors to a minimum to keep Evee from having to catch any other bugs on top of this one.  Feel free to forward this to anyone you feel wants to know how we're doing.

Quoc

Urgent News, Evelyn

Everyone:

Quoc and Jessica called me this morning and informed me that Evelyn is in urgent condition and they wanted me to help pass the news along.  Evelyn contracted spinal meningitis.  Spinal meningitis is an extremely serious illness and happens when a bacterial infection gets past the barrier to the spinal cord.  The state of the matter is that they were able to catch it very early, which is a very good thing.  The best case scenario is that Quoc, Jessica, and Evelyn will be living at the hospital for the next week while Evelyn is treated and watched over.  They could be there for much longer depending on how things go.  There is a possibility of long term complications, but as of now, since they caught it so early, she is looking well.  They have her on antibiotics and her fever and organ functions have stabalized.  They have a team of doctors who will be taking a look at her within the next couple hours and hopefully can find the specific bacteria that caused the infection so they can better target it.  Since the nature of the infection is exposure to bacteria, visitors should be limited since any further infections could weaken her even more.  The doctors told Quoc and Jessica to be "cautiously optimistic" and I think we all should as well.

Quan

It's a girl! Welcome Evelyn Dai-An Nguyen

It's a girl!

Jessica and Quoc are new proud parents. Evelyn Dai-An Nguyen was born 1:54pm Saturday the 21st weighing 7 pounds 10 ounces. Mom, dad and baby are all doing very well!

Sent via mobile.

A letter to Max Part 2

This blog post is a 2nd letter to Max, my cousin who is now starting his adulthood graduating from high school. It's meant to be sort of a brief biography meant to give Max a peek into how his future might look as a young male vietnamese adult. Here's a bit more on my experience.

I can speak a little for Quan too on our motivation for college. My mom's take on going to college is that it was very much expected. She and my dad had to put my Sisters through before Quan and I did and money was very very tight for her but even despite that, she would always tell me and Quan was something like this. "It doesn't matter if we don't have much money, you are going to school and we will find a way for that money to be there". She would always pressure us to do a good job in school as to get a great job afterwards.

What college did you go to?

I went to Western Washington University which is about 3 hours north of where we grew up in Tacoma. Western is a state school and at the time was about 12,000 students in size. College tuition for us at the time averaged about 1000 bucks per quarter. I did four years there doing 3 quarters per year. I got a few scholarships in the first two years which paid for tuition but after which, my parents helped me to pay tuition. Prices have gone up since I went school; looks like it's now about 1700 bucks per quarter. Here's the link to our current price breakdown the school I went to for today:

http://admissions.wwu.edu/tuition/t_tuition.html

Those numbers are if you pay for staying at the school and such. If you live close to home and are frugal about your expenses, you can cut some expenses to get you through more cheaply. A good example of something that saved me a lot of money was frequent trips home to stock up on mom's cooking. =)

Did you ever consider going to work right after high school?

I talked to a Navy recruiter who said that I had pretty good grades in high school and tried to recruit me to go to an academy and become an officer. I thought this would have been pretty cool but it was pretty much out of the question for my mom and dad. Our parents stressed education as one of the single most important things we need to do in our lives. So, just working out of highschool wasn't really an option, although for some it's not necessarily a bad thing.

What is this thing called the college experience?

Up until you're 18, you're living with your parents. When you go to college, even if you are still living at or close to home, you have to make your own decisions. You pay for your own schooling unless you get some scholarships. If you don't go to class, the only one that's going to care is you. Professors and Instructors are there because you paid them for their services. College is a place where you learn because you want to, not because it's something you just have to do. It's also a tremendous opportunity. Because college is a place you choose to be, if you decide to go, you are surrounded by people who are generally intelligent, driven and motivated to do great things. And for the most part, they are your same age, so chances are you'll love to hang out and have fun while learning.

What was your major?

Back in 1998, the internet and tech was HOT. So naturally I picked Computer Science as it seemed like a great way to a good job. I heard that people coming out into the Tech job market making oodles of money. Of course as I mentioned earlier the Tech bubble bursted and the job market was tough but in general it was true. Even after the bubble burst, there was still good demand for properly trained Software Engineers. Computer Science was a great option for me because I was pretty comfortable with Math. I started into college doing Calculus where as many folks tested into algebraic classes. Needless to say my math was stronger than my writing or history for which I started with the 101 courses.

What made you pick this college/major over others? Who was your major influence/idol that pushed you?

I chose Western because both of my sisters went there. At the time, I didn't even know that I wanted to major in Computer Science. It's actually a lucky thing, many folks I knew who went to college took a lot of time in deciding what they wanted to concentrate their studies in. For some, doing the first two years at a community college served them better as it's cheaper yet you can still get the basic requirements necessary for more concentrated studies later. It was nice to know that my sisters made great money after they went through college. They both came out making very very nice salaries after going to school.

How has going to college shaped your lives?

Going to college really gives you tools necessary to see what's possible out there. It's kind of weird but the more you know, the more things you find out you don't know and the world seems to get bigger. You also meet so many people who are creative and intelligent, even if they don't seem to have the right answer for the problem at hand. Surrounding yourself with people like that is huge. To this day in my job I'm surrounded by very very intelligent people who help me grow. This has proved to be worth a ton in money and just as growing as a person.

I actually met Jessica in college. My dad had a saying, something like ... try to meet girls at the market. I think with the assumption being that meeting a girl shopping for food at the market, you might find a good home maker. There's probably a huge difference between meeting a girl at the club or meeting one in school. Well, I won't say which is better but meeting Jess has been very very good for me.

And lastly how immensely different would your life be if you hadn't gone to college? Where would you be now?

It's hard to say what it might have been if I never went to school. I feel that I'm a pretty hard worker, maybe I would have been very creative and started my own business. Or I could have been very comfortable working at a job which didn't require as much education. I can only say for sure that without having done the education that I did, I couldn't be where I'm at today.

Hope this helps! Tuan, do you have any questions?

Quoc

A letter to Max Part 1

This blog post is a letter to Max, my cousin who is now starting his adulthood graduating from high school. It's meant to be sort of a brief biography meant to give Max a peek into how his future might look as a young male vietnamese adult.

Getting to know ya ... a Van Phung male from Tuan to Dat ...

I thought I'd sort of walk backwards in time through me. I'm sure you guys already know but In about a month I'm going to be expecting my first child. I'm sure this is going to change me in a huge way as a person. I mean, just 10 years ago I was 19 years old enjoying my first year in College. Come to think of it, that was the age I was when I first met Jessica at Western. Boy how time flies. Sometimes I think how life would be different if I would have picked a college out of state or if I would have picked a different major in College. My current most favorite hobbies in terms of time spent these days is World of Warcraft (massively multiplayer online game), playing my accoustic Guitar, and hanging out with my family and friends. In the world of warcraft I have a level 80 death knight as an Avatar to a mythical and tactical gaming world. I've been playing guitar off and on for a few years now, I actually got started playing guitar by having a guitar given to me by Uncle Lucky (your dad Tuan). Early last year I decided I wanted to be a bit more serious and play more of these guitar chords and songs that I started learning from youtube and stuff. Me and Quan are actually learning some songs together. Our current favorite song to jam out on our Acoustics is "Tonic - If you could only see" ...

This April will complete my third year at Amazon.com. My official title is Software Developer Engineer 1 but much like clothing and shoes, that title can mean different things in different places. Working at Amazon has been a truly unique experience. The culture there touts customer centric work, frugality, and in terms of software engineering; a very high bar. Jeff Bezos has lead a truly successful customer centric shopping experience which has resulted in a business so large that data processing systems operate on very very high volume data. The environment is very competitive and there are times where I yearn for being a bigger fish at a smaller pond, but at least the time that I have already spent here at Amazon has already toughened my skin and has made me a more abstract thinker in terms of Software Programming. Operating on big datasets in software and working on systems that have very large code bases (thousands of lines of code) I think is what defines the difference between a Programmer and a Software Engineer.

So I currently work at Amazon but it could have turned out differently. When I first graduated from College at Western (Bellingham WA), it was 2002 and the American economy was experiencing a tech bubble burst. What does that mean? People over estimated the demand for software and technology so that artificial demand created an over abundance of technical folks. What did that mean for me in 2002? It was really hard to find a job. I spent a bit of time testing XBox and answering phones for Microsoft before seeking out Northrop Grumman at a job conference in Seattle. In 2002, although the bubble burst, some industries were still demanding technical talent. One of those industries was Defense. So after flying down to Southern California for interviews, I took a job as Systems Engineer at Northrop Grumman Azusa. I felt very lucky actually, to get a job in a time when the market for my field was so bad. I think at the time, I got hired in to make close to what Mr. Luong Dang was making =P In any case, Jess came down a short while after to join me. After two and a half years down in Cali, work in Defense was good. I had friends that were hopping around at Defense companies getting pay raises of 20-30%!!

After two and a half years of working at Northrop, alas Jess and I realized that we really missed our Nuclear families. So at that point we decided to move back to Washington, job or no job. Fortunately on the day Jess and I were packing up the U-Haul to head up from California to WA, we both got calls responding to job searches. Jess started teaching 8th grade science in Puyallup and I got a job at Cingular Wireless (now AT&T). In 2006 Jess and I were up in WA again when we had our wonderful wedding and our first home purchase.

I haven't even talked about my education yet and ... Phew, that's quite a bit! And there's still just so much more. But I think I'll stop here for now. I think this may be a good starter for in DEPTH conversation about how our lives turned out looking back on things. Hind sight is 20/20, but only if you look. I think learning more about how your cousins decisions influenced their lives can help you shape yours going forward Tuan.

I hope this email thread can turn into replies and responses with discussions that are imbued with excerpts of decisions made in our lives that can help you in yours. I hope that there are tidbits that you can gleam a path ahead that you see fit. Or maybe you find that letting life come to you is something that your cousins are actually doing and that this is what you want to do too.

Cheerz, Van Phung male # 4.1

Q