{"id":6964,"date":"2026-02-15T12:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T19:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/?p=6964"},"modified":"2026-03-22T21:37:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T04:37:54","slug":"lighting-up-our-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/2026\/02\/15\/lighting-up-our-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Lighting Up Our Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a>I spent the past weeks obsessing over house lights, swapping bulbs around to optimize lumens and color temperatures. I also installed picture lights over our Peruvian tapestry and hired expert help to put one<\/a> over our fireplace canvas. But Westley was the one to truly light up our lives this year. Last week, he completed the 18 laps of freestyle necessary to pass level 10 and graduate from Swim America<\/a>. He also performed his first orchestra<\/a> concert after just a few months of violin lessons, completed COM<\/a> level 3, and showed off his vocal skills at NewStar’s<\/a> lunar new year gala<\/a>. He even gained enough confident to compete in his first fencing tournament, where placing second-to-last in the Y12 mixed foil<\/a> pool of 5 earned him a bronze medal.\u00a0Melody celebrated my birthday with me at Omakase Por Favor<\/a>, although I had more fun sampling Paris Banh Mi<\/a> and Fluffy Fluffy<\/a> at the Davis Collection<\/a>. Westley spent his birthday posing his completed RG Gundam Sinanju<\/a>, hanging his piranha wall art<\/a>, and trying out the Murdle Jr.<\/a> and Ghost of Yotei<\/a> that we got him as presents. We otherwise continued our tradition of triple chocolate mousse cakes from Nugget<\/a>, and spun the birthday wheel at Shabu Shack<\/a> on Superbowl Sunday in between watching Winter Olympics<\/a> events from Milano-Cortano. Although a person’s zodiac year typically brings bad luck<\/a>, I’m thankful that my Year of the Horse<\/a> has been off to an auspicious start.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent the past weeks obsessing over house lights, swapping bulbs around to optimize lumens and color temperatures. I also installed picture lights over our Peruvian tapestry and hired expert help to put one over our fireplace canvas. But Westley … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6964"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7033,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964\/revisions\/7033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.xephalon.net\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}