Visiting my kids, birthday party

I am about to wrap on the filming of Distance Runners, so after a quick trip to Hong Kong I will drop my stuff in Shanghai, pay my rent and pet my dogs, and desert them yet again. (a friend and a maid care for my dogs during my frequent travels)

One of my dogs, Xingxing ("star") 

The reason I am running to America without taking a break from running non-stop since preproduciton for Distance Runners is that I have not seen my kids in 4 months!!!!!!!! 

I visited my kids and my dad in the fall of 2008

But I get to go home and see them for 3 weeks while i work on the initial preproduction on the film Father John that I will be directing in May and June.

My daughter is having a birthday party for her 14th birthday. She is an amazing young lady. She is a programmer with Linux installed on her computer and is programming in PHP, Wordpress and a few other programming languages and she has some business clients. She is a lovely and beautiful young girl.... AND a self-professed "nerd" (like her dad), a devoted reader of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimon, and a devoted Dr. Who fan.

Anastasia has her own unique style.

 Oh yeah, she now plays electric violin in a garage band too. :-) 

Anastasia Trombly plays her (non-electric) violin last Christmas when i was in USA at Christmas

My son Basil is a creative young artist. He is an engineer at heart I think. He is always designing things like space stations and vehicles and when he was younger made amazing worlds in a wondrous land of Lego blocks. He is now 11 1/2 and eagerly awaiting the chance to spend Spring holidays hiking and boating with his dad. He is also quite a swimmer and a member of the "stingray" swim team at his school. 

Basil's 11th Birthday party

While I am excited to get on to my next film project in China, nothing is better than some time with the family, the kids that I love.