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“Just ride around in buses and trains and cable cars”

Aaron and I recently went to San Francisco to see an aunt who was in town visiting, and he was really disappointed about not being able to go on a cable car. Adam was at school at the time, but hew knew that we went and that planted a seed that made him beg to […]

Health, trees, San Francisco, and the zoo!

A couple weeks ago I entered a period of depression. It’s something that I’ve written about before, I’ve had bouts of depression since I was a youth, and there doesn’t seem to be a pattern or rationale to when they strike. I do think these bouts are made worse by life circumstances and stress, mostly […]

Adam’s 5th birthday and a museum rainforest

We concluded 2023 in Philadelphia and got back to California late on January 5th so we could celebrate Adam’s birthday over the weekend. On Saturday we decorated and settled back into our usual routine, with an added bonus of a trip to Adam’s favorite restaurant to enjoy his favorite food and then some birthday ice […]

Concluding the year in Philadelphia

We spent the last couple weeks of 2023 and the first week of 2024 at the townhouse in Philadelphia. We had just been there for Thanksgiving, so it kind of felt like resuming the rest of a trip, since some of the food in the refrigerator was still good, and we didn’t bother having anyone […]

Aaron’s 3rd birthday and a lot of trains!

On December 3rd we had a little birthday party to celebrate Aaron’s third birthday, a day after his birthday to make sure our au pair could join us, and so not to have it on the same day MJ returned from an international work trip. I decided to decorate on Friday night so he’d get […]

Hanukkah 2023 / 5784

Hanukkah this year came together beautifully. A huge part of crafting a successful holiday was that I took a week off from work following Thanksgiving. In addition to all the boring house stuff I did, I was able to prepare for Hanukkah. The first thing of note is that I did more decorating than I […]

A week of chores

I don’t know how other people with full time jobs and young kids do it. Is it normal to take a week off from work just to catch up on chores and tasks around the house? This will be a bit of an unusual post by getting into boring details of tasks everyone has to […]

Thanksgiving with the family in Philadelphia

We spent the week before Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving week itself at our townhouse in Philadelphia. Since this is just another home spot for us, we were both working most of the time, and the usual laundry, dishes, and house stuff. A few days into our trip, the dishwasher stopped working, but thankfully it had just […]

Harvests and Halloween

Halloween is a pretty big deal at our house. Autumn is my favorite season, and our modern, spooky, secular Halloween is one that I’ve increasingly embraced as the years have gone on. We put hang lights and decorate, there are all kinds of little lights and spiders and eye balls that end up floating around […]

COVID-19 came home again, but not for long!

When I returned from my trip to Las Vegas, I tested negative for COVID-19 and happily re-joined my family. The next morning I had a cough, headache, and the general fatigue that were all too familiar. A second line on a COVID-19 test confirmed my fears, I had it. At that point I had already […]