www.kuraoka.org
Us, up to now: We met in 1996 through a personals ad in the San Diego Reader, if you can believe it. We got engaged about a year later, on a daytrip to the Anza Borrego Desert. We were married in 1998; our wedding day in Balboa Park was made especially memorable by the first recorded hail in the park in more than 100 years. We were the very first wedding held in the Granada Room, which was the original chapel, next to the big ballroom in the restored House of Hospitality; many of our wedding photos were taken posed in the beautiful space that is now the Prado Restaurant. Our pre-kid(s) life was one of relative indulgence - season tickets to the Old Globe Theater, camping, last-minute travel to Germany and England, weekends and evenings to ourselves. Now, our home in a suburban San Diego neighborhood is filled with a joyful chaos of our own making. We have two boys. We still travel, only differently. Life is good. You can stay up-to-date with what’s going on in our lives by visiting our current Weekly Journal, an online diary of ordinary family life.
Meet the Kuraoka family:
Ondine: will turn 41 this year. She was a social worker (MSW, Smith College),
and is now a freelance writer. She works
from home, writing articles for family-oriented
magazines, business profiles, and the occasional travel piece. She also writes
fiction and poetry. Her hobbies include reading, gardening, crafts, and travel.
John: will turn 47 this year. He is a freelance advertising copywriter who works out
of his home office/cave. He has been writing ads for about 25 years. He maintains this
website and writes most of our journals. His hobbies include history, reading, re-reading,
cooking,
and travel.
Roy: will turn nine this year. He’s in third grade at Gage
Elementary. He’s a Bear Cub in Cub Scout Pack 951. He likes running, science, math, reading, and writing.
He is into writing and illustrating his own books, and building massive Lego and
K’Nex models.
Leo: will turn seven this year. He’s in first grade at Gage, part of
a controversial cohort of kids from Kindergarten. He
likes reading, writing stories, and art. He is into
ghosts, pirates, skeletons, Lego Castle sets, and Captain Underpants.
Buddy: is a scruffy, 19-pound Jack Russell Terrier mutt, about four years
old. He likes eating, running, and chasing flashlight beams, although he harbors
great hopes of catching a rat or opossum.
Other Very Important People:
Barbara and Bill: Ondine’s parents, John’s in-laws, Roy’s and
Leo’s grandparents.
And, our next-door neighbors. Believe it or not, we all get along very well!
Frances: John’s mom, Ondine’s mother-in-law, and Roy’s and
Leo’s other grandmother.
She lives in La Caņada, near Los Angeles.
The Playgroup: Individually and as a group, we help each other stay sane
through the challenges of raising children. When the playgroup started, all the kids were
roughly Roy’s age. Now, what with growing families, there is a new batch of kids, of which
Leo is a part. The families in the playgroup (besides our own) are:
Friends and Family:
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