Welcome Bak To Our Home

Last Update: July 27, 2007

Just when you thought this site was dead, the Baks are back! Unfortunately, there are no additional Event updates for the moment, although many are still planned. We've just been extremely busy and Jim has had zero time to dedicate any energy to this site. This update is to bring the website back online as we have changed internet service providers. Maybe, MAYBE, we'll add more content or perform some minor updates later this summer.

2006 Events

July 27, 2006: Finally! All caught up! Lots of events. Lots of updates. This one is of a family vacation that was taken during the July 4 week up to Monterey Bay and San Francisco. This was a very relaxing and enjoyable trip. Jim really needed this trip since his job was taking a drastic toll on his sanity. Plus, it was getting obvious that his job was going to cost him the annual trip to Oregon with Carrie and the kids. So, this was the family vacation.

We also updated the above picture. The prior one has been moved to Jim's birthday section.

July 15, 2006: The power updates continue! This time, we are witnessing Carson's 6th birthday party. Carson finally got his revenge on Natalie by inviting all of the boys from his kindergarten class. Fortunately for Natalie, Auntie Aimee and the grandparents showed up to give her all of the loving attention she needs. Check out the events section and see that ultra-cool jolly jump we got Carson.

July 14, 2006: We have another update for you. Palm Springs. Carrie, the kids, Carol and Aimee went to Palm Springs towards the end of April to hook up with The Bowers and Sherrie (remember them from the pics during Natalie's birthday?). Jim was on a business trip that week in Texas and, as usual, couldn't go. So, come on in and check out the desert wildlife.

July 13, 2006: A flurry of updates, only to be bogged down with higher priority stuff. Anyways, the long-awaited pics of Natalie's 4th birthday are finally up 2 months too late. Natalie invited all of her girlie friends (much to Carson's dismay - although, give him 10 years and he won't be complaining about that!). Lots of presents, lots of cake. Such is the life of our kids. Now that Carrie and the kids are on their way up to Oregon, there should be absolutely no excuse for Jim to put up the rest of the past, but un-posted events.

Upcoming updates are now a trip to Palm Springs, Carson's birthday, our family trip to San Francisco, and new mug shots in the Contacts section.

June 7, 2006: Here we go with another update. This time, it's Easter. The Easter weekend was spent up in Santa Barbara where the kids colored eggs the day before. On Easter morning, they found the mother lode dropped by the ever generous Easter bunny. Since a bunch of eggs were found inside the house, we had the kids thinking that the Easter bunny did a Santa down the chimney to get into the house.

June 3, 2006: Wow! 3 days in a row of updates! Definitely a record around here. The next event is Jim's 37th birthday. We all met at Dave's condo in Calabasas and went out to dinner. This was followed by the obligatory birthday song and dance. So, check out and see how Asians age gracefully.

As you can see, the Bak's got a new portrait. This also came from Jim's birthday. As a result, the old picture of the kids dressed in Korean outfits has been moved to Claire's 1st birthday.

June 2, 2006: Another set of pics are up. This time, it's San Luis Obispo. Around the tail end of March, Carrie and the kids cruised on up to SLO to meet up with Bill, Laura and Jordan for a few days. Looks like they had a good time while Jim was slaving away at work.

June 1, 2006: A half a year later and we're finally updating this site. It has been a busy, busy, really busy time and this site has definitely suffered as a result. So, hopefully you hadn't given up all hope for a future update. Because, here it is. Here is the first of many, many upcoming updates. This first one is a guys weekend that Jim went on in Lake Tahoe in March. Not many pics (after all, guys don't take much pictures when they're with other guys) - so only the snow-shoeing event is going to be posted (too bad for the skiiers), but the scenery was great, the gambling was awesome (Jim is the craps master) and it was just a good time.

Upcoming updates that are tentatively planned - San Luis Obispo, Jim's birthday, Easter, Natalie's birthday, Palm Springs and Carson's birthday. We will also include a new Bak picture above and updated pics of everbody on the Contacts page.

2005 Events

December 1, 2005: Boo! Oh, that was more than a month ago. Well, we've finally got the Halloween pics up and online. We got a little lazy after the prior post. But, better late than never.

November 14, 2005: Welcome back! We're a little on the late side, but better late then never. We actually have the beginnings of a series of updates for you. First, we're going to start off with Claire's very first birthday. That's right, she is now one year old. And as the Korean custom, she too had to dress up in a Korean outfit. So, make your way over to our Events section to check it out.

Coming soon...U.

September 26, 2005: This must be some kind of record. Another update in a week! Well, as promised, we have the annual Oregon trip up. Yes, a little late, but at least we deliver. So click your way over to the Events section and check them out. Then, come back to our home page and congratulate Bill and Laura again.

September 19 , 2005: Wow! It's been awhile since this site has been updated. We have been extremely busy since our last update. An abnormally large amount of home repairs, our kids (and the new school year), and Jim being on business travel quite a lot lately. Plus, Jim has been extremely busy maintaining his sports website for all of his friends. However, we have an update that took top priority as you can see from the following pics.

You guessed it. Carson, Natalie and Claire now have a cousin. Jordan Reilly Cresswell was born to Bill and Laura (Carrie's sister) on September 15, 2005 at 9:56PM. Stats are 7lbs. 15oz., 20.25in. long. All ten fingers and toes and a very, very cute baby. Congratulations Bill and Laura!!

On another note, Jim has now taken priority to add another forthcoming update for the July/August Oregon trip.

June 16 , 2005: We have another update for you. Carson had his 5th birthday. Since we had a huge bbq for Natalie's birthday, we decided that it would be a nice breather not to have to barbecue, deal with jolly jumps, clean the house, etc etc in order to host a party. So, we went the easy street by having Carson's birthday party at Chuck E Cheese (much to Carson's delight). Little did we know what it would COST to feed 30 kids and their parents at those lovely Chuck E Cheese pizza prices. Yikes. So, just meander over to the Events section to see the pics.

We also added a pic to Natalie's birthday section.

May 3, 2005: Well, it's been quite a while since our last update. Things have been quiet here on the Bak front. Jim's company had their annual holiday party in January at Fins in Calabasas. However, because of Claire still being a newborn, we were unable to partake in the limo nor were we able to hang out much at the restaurant. Since pictures were paltry, to say the least, we decided against posting this as an event on our website. Carrie's uncle Tim and his family from France came over during February. Carrie and the kids had lots of fun with them. Jim wasn't able to see them due to the problems from the La Conchita mudslide that thwarted his every attempt at making it to Santa Barbara. Carrie and Jim went and saw Billy Idol at the Ventura Theater in March. Ahhh, the Eighties.

Jim has been quite busy creating a sister website dedicated to all of his sports-fan buddies. It was a major undertaking which caused him to neglect this site for awhile. However, it's pretty much up and running with a few to-do tweaks in the works. If you want to check it out, you can get there via this link. We are still waiting for Jim's brother to design a cool logo for this site to add to the Links section of our website. Until then....

Which brings us to the reason for this update. Natalie had her 3rd birthday party. It was a princess and pirate themed party. Lots of pretty dresses and tons of sword fighting. So, go to the events section to check it out.

January 11, 2005: Welcome to the first installment for 2005! As usual, we neglected to update the website to wish everybody a Happy Holiday and New Year and all of that usual jolly good stuff. So, please accept our apologies and we hope you at least got our Christmas card. If not, shame on us, email us, and we'll get you added to our Christmas card list PRONTO!

We had an extremely important celebrity sighting that appeared in the Ventura Star Free Press today. Instead of directing you to the article, we saved the picture for you to see. Click here to check it out!

2004 Events

October 26, 2004: Pictures of Claire Nicole Bak are now up in the Events Section. In addition, she now has her very own Email Box in the Contacts Page. So, if you want to email her, please do. We must warn you, though. She's not much of a conversationalist right now. Give her time. She'll warm up.

Anyways, it's been quite the hectic week so far. We've had lots of company over throughout the past week. We have been busy trying to dedicate as much quality time to Carson and Natalie as we can whenever we're not taking care of Claire. Obviously, our normal routine has been quite disrupted. Claire started off as a night owl, but is slowly allowing her parents (or should we say, Carrie) to sleep more at nights. Natalie loves her. She is so into holding her and being touchy-feely right now. Carson is like, "Cool, new baby. Now where are my toys?" Kiva is probably bummed to have another human around the house to either be bossed around or be pestered. Poor dog.

So, step inside and check out the new addition to the Bak family!

October 19, 2004: News Flash! The Baks are proud to announce the birth of our 3rd child - Claire Nicole Bak. Born Monday, October 18, 2004 at 4:03 AM at St. John's Pleasant Valley Hospital, Camarillo, CA. Weight - 8 lbs, 9 oz. Height - 21 inches. Pictures to follow soon.

September 21 , 2004: It's not hopefully soon, but our Oregon trip is finally up. Things have been really, really busy here since the last update. While we were waiting for the last of the Oregon film rolls to finally get developed and printed, Jim spent a great deal of time trying to figure out a motherboard problem with his brother's computer. Carrie spent a great deal of time getting herself and the kids prepped for another school year. We both spent a lot of time sifting through over 400 photos of this darn trip. As soon as the last Oregon prints got developed and Jim had figured out his brother's computer problem - he seems to have many :), the hard drive on our main computer crashed. Luckily, this entire website work area is on the second hard drive which seems to still be running like a champ (cross our fingers, your fingers, and everybody else's fingers). Between getting a new hard drive, re-installing and fine-tuning EVERYTHING on this computer, raising kids and all of the other extra-curricular activities that seem to pre-empt getting this job done, it's finally DONE! Finally, a check mark on one of many on the TO-DO list.

And, for those that know, there will be another significant update next month.... Hint? We will have to postpone the "U" party until next year.

August 15 , 2004: Finally, the Businesspeople Special pictures are up. Sorry about the delay, but several things factored in. 1) Our annual Oregon vacation came in between the baseball game and now, 2) We ran out of disk space on our web host and Jim had to add another profile to get some more room, 3) Once we got more disk space, many of the pics had to be relocated and the web links updated, and 4) Due to the sparsity of the baseball game pics and the lower than usual attendance, Jim debated on whether or not to can the update of this site with this event. Well, you can see who won the debate.

Coming hopefully soon, the Oregon vacation.

Oh, one more thing. The Websters finally reciprocated and put a link to our site on their family webpage! I guess it goes to show that not all University of Florida products are all that bad.

July 1, 2004: ALOHA! Yep, you guessed it. Our Hawaiian vacation pics are finally up. It's so nice to use a friend's wedding as an excuse to have a great vacation. Definitely was a good time. Now we're just waiting for the next friend/relative to have a wedding in some exotic location. After sifting through almost 300 pictures, you'll have to go to the Events section to find the ones that made the grade.

Carson and Natalie got new mug shots in the Contact Us section since those were quite out-dated.

We now have a new means of navigating our web site. The old Java buttons have now been replaced by the new button bar located near the top of the web page. Each section will have one of these with the current section's button darkened and inactive to indicate where you are. In addition, those pages will also have our ultra-cool logo at the top to get you back here. You will still need to hit the "Back" button on your preferred browser to return to the Events page from the particular event that you're viewing.

June 10, 2004: Carson turned 4 years old last month. Since we were vacationing in Hawaii earlier this month, it took a while to get all of Carson's 4th birthday pics all sorted out and added to this amazing website that should be receiving critical acclaim. Anyways, those pics are now up.

Coming soon to a browser near you, our Hawaiian Vacation.

May 9, 2004: Wow! Two updates in less than a week??!!!! Who would have believed? We now have Natalie's 2nd Birthday pics up! Time sure flies.

On another note, we noticed that for those of you without a Java enabled browser, the navigation buttons on the left won't appear. You can still navigate our site by putting the cursor over the area where the buttons should be and looking at the link URL that appears on the bottom of the browser. Therefore, it appears that we'll be working on a new set of navigation buttons that isn't so Java dependent.

May 4, 2004: Two things happened last month. Carson and Natalie went on their first camping trip. Woohoo!!! Granted it was near the beach so we were guaranteed that the kids would have a good time and would think camping was the greatest thing. But, it felt really good to finally camp again. These pics are now up. The second event that occurred was Natalie's 2nd Birthday. Rather than give you a <insert your Asian accent here> two-fo-won-spesho, we decided to make you wait a tad longer for Natalie's pics.

April 15, 2004: Can you say, "Procrastination?" Pics of our mini-vacation to the Grand Canyon are finally up. Afterwards, we went down to Sedona, Arizona to meet up with Carrie's sister and her husband from Oregon.

February 15, 2004: We apologize for the long absence between posts. We should have at least said Merry Xmas, Happy New Year, etc. etc. As a matter of fact, there would have been another post close to New Year's. Unfortunately, the Silicon Valley Football Classic nailed the coffin for any further Year 2003 posts. Maybe the next football season will be a bit more promising.

So, we'll bring you our first 2004 event. The annual GBL Holiday Party took place, yet again. We just find new ways to always top the prior year's event.

On another note, for those of you who are Bruin alumni and get the Ventura edition of that coveted magazine, you'll find a pic of Carrie and Natalie in there during our Picture with Joe Bruin event.

2003 Events

December 12, 2003: During the Thanksgiving holiday, we took a small family outing to Long Beach to check out the Long Beach Aquarium.

November 13, 2003: The "T" Annual Halloween Party pics are here! Treat thyself to a tasty, tantalizing, thrilling tempest of terror.

October 14, 2003: WOW! We actually have a photo on another website! Check it out here on the Ventura County Bruins website!

September 6, 2003: Pop-Ups are lame. Since we hate pop-ups, why should we have them on our site? All Event links are now pop-up disabled. If you need to get back to the main Events section, just hit the Back button on your browser.

September 1, 2003: The Business People Special pics are up. Funny how this event turned from a beer pound-fest (and your occasional stadium brawls, food fights, imprisonment <ahem, not me>, and all sorts of other debauchery) into a family fun fest. I mean, we're talking roughly 15 adults and 10 kids! What have we become...?

August 25, 2003: Finally! Sorry it's taken so long. It took forever to get the pictures assembled and sifted through. In addition, we were having server space issues. 10Megs to host a site full of pics is definitely paltry, to say the least. Therefore, all of the 2002 events had to be relocated from Jim's web space to Carrie's web space and all of the links updated. Time consuming, but at least we're up and running now. Now on to the real update.

The annual Oregon trip. Once again, the Baks vacationed up in Oregon. Between the relatives, waterfalls, rivers, lakes, trains, and a sprinkle of breweries here and there, it made for a great time. Boy, was it hot as HELL! You would think that as lush as Oregon seems to us non-natives, it would be cooler ... NOT. But, it made wading in the lakes and rivers that much more pleasant. Pics are up in the Events section.

Coming really soon. The Businesspeople Special.

June 6, 2003: We celebrated Carson's 3rd birthday a couple of weeks ago. It started off with a Chuck E Cheese lunch party with the mother's group that Carrie hangs out with. Then came the weekend. We originally conceptualized this to be a small birthday party for Carson with our close friends and family. Then it became a BBQ get-together. Pretty soon, it was like wedding invites. You just want to invite everybody. So, this small party for a 3 year old's birthday became a major pound-fest for the adults. Whew! Needless to say, pics are kind of sparse since we were too busy trying to play host. Sorry Carson.

I also reorganized the Events section so that the latest updates are towards the top of the table. Enjoy!

May 18, 2003: Pics of our mini-getaway are now up. As you can see from the above picture, we went to Disneyland. But, that's not all folks! We also saw an Angels game and went to a railroad park. Step inside for more details and visuals. We've also decided that as we rotate the main page pic above, the displaced pic will return to the appropriate page that it belongs in.

May 3, 2003: Welcome to the re-vamped Bak home page. Most of these pages are now a little more navigable using the ultra cool menu on the left-hand side. No more hitting the "Back" button on your preferred browser. For the pages of plain ole pics in the Events section, a new browser will pop up and display the chosen page for you to admire. Just close/exit that browser when done. For those of you wondering why we chose the yellow and blue color scheme, just think UCLA. In addition, if you have any comments and/or suggested improvements to this site, please email Jim Bak for consideration. Also, Natalie got a new self portrait in the Contact page. Jim's brother was cool enough to develop the cool logo. And finally, Natalie's first birthday party is the main event.

April 21, 2003: We just had a birthday weekend. All digital photos have been sifted through. But, we are waiting for film processing to complete. In the meanwhile, I've decided that this site needs a complete overhaul. So, you should soon see a new home page that is a little more navigable, at the least.