No place like home for special family portrait
In the portrait, the five Vo girls - dressed in their Sunday best - stand poised next to their proud father in a pastoral area near Lake Natoma.
The girls are beaming, and so is their dad. The family is proud, elegant and radiating joy.
"It was exciting. It was the first time for our family to take a picture like that," said Nini Vo, 14.
The family portrait - ensconced in a dignified wooden frame - soon will be hung in the family's tiny one-bedroom apartment off Stockton Boulevard.
On a recent afternoon, the family quibbled about where to hang the portrait as they studied the other photos that had been taken of them. Book of Dreams readers purchased the professional photo shoot for the Vo family.
The portrait is testimony to how far the family has come since the devastating fire in their homeland in Vietnam several years ago that killed their mother, Chu Vo's wife. Although three of the girls were badly burned, they look beautiful in the portrait.
"Now it feels like home," Kiki Vo, 15, said of having a family portrait in the house.
