We flew out on Friday, so we were able to attend a birthday for their cousin Sam. The birthday party took place at an large indoor playground with all kinds of fun stuff for the kids to run around and play on. It was a lot of fun for them, and I enjoyed the Godzilla theme and cake.

Afterwards we did a bit of shopping nearby, but it was a pretty long day having just arrived the day before! It was nice to check off some shopping things off our list at the beginning of the trip though.

The following day we made our way over to New Jersey to visit with some family and continue a TV setup process that MJ started over the winter holidays. It was nice to visit them again, and the boys enjoyed playing on their power lift recliner.

Since MJ and I work while we’re there, the weekdays were pretty normal with our au pair, who travels with us, watching the kids during the day. The weather was beautiful for most of the time were were there, so throughout the trip the kids got to visit lots of interesting playgrounds and Ana also brought them to a K1 go kart place one day, which Adam hasn’t stopped talking about (Aaron isn’t big enough yet, but he enjoyed the video games!).

One evening I took the boys to the theater to see Hoppers. They’re getting a lot better at being quiet and focused during visits to the theater, which is nice because I enjoyed taking them, even if they weren’t huge fans of the movie. I was surprised at how expensive it’s become though, I clearly need to find a cheaper way to do this in the long term, but in the short term I found a pile of AMC ticket vouchers that MJ bought YEARS ago that should still be valid. With all the great movies coming out this year, we’ll have a summer full of theater adventures!

I already wrote about spending the next Saturday at CPOSC. On the way home we took the scenic route down 340 and the boys enjoyed seeing all the horses and Amish buggies, counted farms along the way, they stopped when they got to 100. We haven’t properly done Lancaster with them, so maybe that’s an adventure we’ll embark on over the summer. On the way home we needed some dinner, so we stopped in King of Prussia and went back to the Netflix House and had a surprisingly chill dinner at NetFlix Bites.

On Wednesday I took the day off from work to prepare for a Passover Seder. I’m glad I did. Even though I wasn’t cooking the meal, I did have to pick up the catered food, and I made Charoset for the first time! Making Charoset is actually pretty easy, I looked at a few recipes and then settled on a version of My FAVORITE Passover Charoset where I simplified it spice-wise, swapped out the walnuts for almonds, and wine for grape juice, so the recipe ended up being:

• 1/2 granny smith apple
• 1 gala apple
• 3/8 cup sliced almonds
• 3/4 Tablespoons honey
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 Tablespoons grape juice

For chopping the apples I pulled out the food processor that I got a couple years ago for latkes.

I know it’s dead simple and all you do is mix everything together, but I’m no chef, so anything is a win. I think I will double the recipe next year so we end up with leftovers.

Then it was time to prep the dishes! I decided to pull out nice china that belonged to MJ’s grandparents, a set of glasses that my father-in-law explained came from a trip to Italy, and took some polish wipes to the silver utensils, also inherited from MJ’s grandparents. We didn’t have a Seder plate in Philly, but I solved that the week before with a drive down to Jerusalem Israeli Gift Shop. The women who own the shop were incredibly helpful, and I left with a Seder plate, a matzoh plate, a matzoh cover, and a couple bottles of wine. The last bit of shopping was picking up some endives from Acme. Finally, I had to roast the lamb shank bone that we picked up from House of Kosher, along with the hard boiled egg, both for the Seder plate.

It was a lot to do for a day when I’m “not cooking”. All worth it though, things came together really nicely and the boys enjoyed having grandpa come over instead of just doing a Seder with our immediate family in California.

I wanted to make sure I slowed down to enjoy our time too, so we didn’t really focus on home improvement projects. However, a built-in microwave repair was thrust upon us a couple days before we left. I wasn’t a microwave person until I had kids, and now we use it all the time. The switch inside the door had stopped working properly, so it could no longer reliably sense when the door was open or closed, which meant sometimes it would work. Thankfully, an appliance repair company was able to come out the next day and get it fixed. I still have mixed feelings about repairing it verses replacing it for how much we paid, but I kept an otherwise perfectly fine appliance out of a landfill, and saved us all the stress of shopping and coordinating a mounted installation, so it was probably the right move.

And I wasn’t completely idle. I realized one of the ways I want to enjoy our home there is by using our deck. We’re coming up on our 9th year with the townhouse, and we’ve never had deck furniture! Sometimes I’ll haul a folding table out there for a “picnic” or the boys will use it to run around, but effectively it wasn’t a space we could really enjoy. To change this I did a minimal amount of searching and found a nice patio couch and coffee table set that I could pick up at the Home Depot right away, and got that assembled one evening. Hooray!

Coincidentally, a neighbor also posted on the Facebook group for the development that she was looking to get rid of her patio table and six chairs. It’s a nice set, so I reached out and arranged a pick-up time. That’s how MJ and I ended up hauling a table over a deck railing and into our house the night before we left Philly, hah! It’s on the larger side, but I think I found an orientation that will work for us on the deck. I’ll take some better pictures when everything is set up over the summer.

Super Mario Galaxy came out while we were in town, we planned on having all of us go, but Aaron fell ill with a stomach bug that slowly made its way through our household, and so I just took Adam. It was a fun movie, and it turns out the whole family will get an opportunity to see it together at the end of this week when we go to our local single-screen theater to see it with their elementary school.

As the visit wound down, we managed to get lunch with cousin Lauren and her husband and new baby. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of them over the summer, as they’re only about 40 minutes away now and they have pools at their development. And what do our kids love? Pools. And we got to see Aunt Irina and cousin Sammy one last time before we left, we picked up some takeout sushi and had a nice time in her recently renovated back yard, and then down in the playroom basement where I got to play with Lego. Oh, and the kids played with Lego too. I also managed to successfully make matzoh brie on the Saturday before we left, even if MJ and I were the only ones who enjoyed it.

In all, it was a really nice visit that didn’t end up feeling like too much, in spite of how much we packed into it. The kids had plenty of down time to play video games, and I did too. I finished reading a book while we were there, and definitely got some springtime enjoyment out of that new couch in the back, from nighttime playing on my Switch to having breakfast outside with the boys. We also had a deck umbrella delivered which will fit nicely into the hole in our new table, we’ll just need to get a small umbrella base when we get into town so that it stays put during our visit (we’ll bring it inside between visits).

Honestly, it went better than I expected. During most of the sessions the boys decided to ignore the presentation entirely and focus on their phones or Nintendo devices (we brought my old Switch and DS for them). They only forgot a couple of times that they were supposed to be quiet and would louder-than-full-volume ask me a question, but I tried to sit in seats where that would be the least disruptive, and I think we succeeded. There was one moment when a presenter was showing his Minecraft-inspired TNT toy he made on the screen and Aaron shouted “MOM WHY IS THERE MINECRAFT TNT ON THE SCREEN?!” but that was met with laughs from the rest of the audience (and the presenter did ask the audience if there was familiarity with Minecraft, so it was arguably appropriate). MJ and I also switched off on kiddo duty for a couple sessions, but that gave us some time for snacks and to explore the rest of the activities at the conference.

But on to the talks! I really enjoyed the “Where AI Meets Hardware: Designing and Building a 3D Satellite Tracker” talk by Tom Courtney. He’s a retired technologist who has been spending a lot of hobby time over the past year+ playing with LLMs to help him build devices. He’s effectively been using AI as a collaborator to bring his ideas to life based on his strict criteria for what he’s looking to accomplish, and used his recent device that tracks the ISS orbiting Earth as a use case. He begins with a design phase where he goes back and forth with the AI to determine the base hardware he should buy and basic electronics, and even design the CAD files (with FreeCAD) for the enclosure he 3D printed. He then uses the AI to do a lengthy debugging phase where he checks where any failures are and goes back to the AI to see if it can figure out where there are wiring problems, or why a brownout occurred, and other issues. And then the final build-out where things like app support and other finishing touches are applied. He shared that you can’t expect the AI to spit out a perfectly working device, and you still have to have the “hacker mentality” to stick with it over the iterations, but that the AI ultimately helped him get past issues that would have doomed the project in the past if he were doing it entirely himself, or even with the help of volunteers on various Maker forums.

After the session, Aaron got to get a close up view of the tracker, and was even invited to press the button to turn it on!

It all reminded me of the keynote I saw at GitHub Universe back in October where the presenter pulled an old Bluetooth-enabled Furby out the closet and brought it back to life with modernized code, and some vibe-coded enhancements. These are projects that are fun and fulfilling, but as busy adults they wouldn’t have even been attempted if the AI hadn’t made the finish line a lot closer. It opens a lot of doors for me too, there are TONS of projects I’d like to work on with my kids to get them into an engineering mindset, but between my limited time and their attention span, the projects we can tackle are quite limited and may not succeed in creating the curiosity and Maker spark I would love them to have.

At lunch I was delighted to meet up with some of my old pals from PLUG and elsewhere in the eastern Pennsylvania tech scene. I don’t get out to events much even when I am in town, so I treasure the times I do have.

After lunch I went to a talk by Dr. Stephanie Schwartz, “From Hype to Habit: How Software Engineers Are Using Generative AI”, and this really drove home what I love about regional open source conferences. Professor Schwartz teaches right there at Millersville University and did a survey of her community regarding how everyday developers are using AI assistance in their work. After all the hype and very future looking big conferences I go to, it was nice to find some grounding in her survey results. She discovered what we suspected, that a vast majority of developers today are using AI to some extent, and there’s no going back. There’s still a lack of trust in the code the AI generates, so expertise and reviews are still essential to any adoption. One slide in particular really struck home for me, and it was quotes from more senior developers implying that it’s increased their workload because there is sometimes a disconnect in understanding the code from the more junior developers submitting it so the review burden is more onerous. I can personally speak to this additional pressure and frustration, but my hope is that this will ease as we develop a better, more thoughtful way of using these tools. It was also a complementary talk to the one later in the day by Erica Windisch on “The Vibe of Agentic Infrastructure” which did give that more future-focused tour of the emerging technologies available and being developed, with a keen eye on things like security.

From there, I took the advice of Joshua Boyd and brought the boys over to the Retro Hardware room, which was a lot of fun. A local group had brought in about a dozen vintage systems, all loaded up with games. They got to play Super Mario World on an SNES connected to a color portable TV, and then Aaron and I got to play Oregon Trail on an Apple IIe and Adam played Pac-Man on a Commodore SX-64.

The final talk of the day we went to was by our friend Walt Mankowski on “A Brief History of Time Syncing” where he talked about history of time in general, and then some of the internals of NTP. He was even kind enough to add some bonus slides at the end because Adam was curious about how time worked in space, I made sure he had put his phone away by the time we got to that part.

The event concluded with some lightning talks. I gave one on using GitHub Actions across architectures, where I demonstrated using GitHub’s free bare-metal runners for x86_64 and arm64, and then s390x using qemu in a container for emulation, and finally the GitHUb Actions runner service for s390x and ppc64le that a team I’m on launched last year. I kicked off the workflow when I started my talk, ran through my slides, and was done in time to see successful results of the test show up in GitHub. Woo, a successful live demo! Slides from the talk are here: GitHub_Actions_x_Multiarch_-_CPOSC_2026.pdf (140K)

Thanks to Tom Swartz for taking a photo during my talk! (source)

And then it was time for the farewell!

The CPOSC team held an after party at a nearby office, which I’ve enjoyed attending in the past, but with a pair of tired kiddos who were eager to find some dinner they had a bit more control over, we decided to start on our journey back to Philly. It was a great day, and I’m glad I could attend with the whole family this year.

But first, the boys helped me make the Hamantaschen at home!

This year we used cherry pie filling, home made plum jam (from our tree!), and Nutella for a few, upon Aaron’s request.

The boys had a lot of fun at the carnival at the synagogue. They dressed up in their Halloween costumes from October to join all the other kids (and some adults) in the costume parade and songs before the carnival. Then there were jugglers, a bouncy house, lots of games, and they both even agreed to eat hot dogs for lunch there. And they really loved adding up all their prize tickets at the end to pick out some prizes.

The following weekend I was at SCALE, but MJ brought Aaron to his first t-ball game, and I had the pleasure of joining them the following weekend. Watching a bunch of 4-5 year olds scattered around a baseball diamond trying to do something resembling a baseball game is absolutely adorable. They’re not great at hitting, or catching, or throwing, or knowing much about game mechanics at all, but they’re all having a lot of fun outdoors with some new friends. At this second game we also had our first au pair and her husband join us to watch him play, and go out for lunch afterwards.

I am practicing catch with Aaron in the evenings when we have time and the weather cooperates (it’s been HOT!), I even picked up my own baseball glove. He’s also still got practice with his team on Monday evenings too. Lots of baseball!

Getting into the routine of baseball and religious school over the weekend will take some getting used to. I’m usually scouring email and websites for the latest activities at our local parks and museums to keep us busy. On the one hand, it’s nice to not have to do that, but on the other, will I miss our constant adventures? We’ll see!

The rest of our weekends have been taken up by obligatory errands and chores, including our continuing project to clear out and reorganize the garage while the boys ride their bikes outside.

Aaron and I have also been doing a lot of Lego together, most recently we’re working our way through a set with four Star Wars astromech droids wearing costumes. The boys have also started playing video games together a bit more, with Adam showing Aaron how to play the games, which is super cute. They’ve even brought me in to play sometimes, especially when they’re playing on Realms and the two of them join on the PS5 and I can hop on with my Switch (how many copies of Minecraft across devices are we going to end up owning?).

F1 season began too, and though we’ve never watched it before, Adam asked if we could this year. Sure! That means putting on some practices here and there, and then watching the 30 minute race recaps each week. It’s been a lot of fun. They have so many questions about cars that I don’t know how to answer, so we’re learning a lot too.

So as much as I love adventures, bonding with them over things we can do at home from the couch is really nice too, and gets me at least a little of the rest I need over the weekend.

This week I’m packing for us to head to Philadelphia for a couple weeks. We’re aiming to attend a cousin’s birthday party, go to an open source conference, and Passover host a Seder at our house with as many family members as we can convince to come by. Packing has me a little overwhelmed, as always, but I’m sure we’ll have a nice time once I can settle in.

Our Saturdays will also soon be spoken for, as Aaron started T-Ball practice at the beginning of February. Monday evening they have practice, and Saturday they play a game. In preparation for all of this, we also had to go shopping. Aaron is now equipped with cleats, a bat, a batting helmet, and a glove, and it’s been a lot of fun to do with him. Adam is less enthusiastic since he comes along to practice with us, but we’ll find another activity for him to do soon.

Zara the cat has also really been enjoying post-cone life as her wounds remain healed and the fur slowly begins to grow back at the end of her tail. Now we just need to stop her from trying to run outside for an adventure every time we open the door.

In mid-February the boys had a week off from school for “ski week” where we did not ski. In fact, the storms were so bad that they advised no one to head to the mountains to ski due to dangerous conditions, including a deadly avalanche. Besides, we don’t ski, so instead we invited my mother to visit! The weather meant that for the second time here, my mother had to spend time in uncharacteristically soggy conditions, but we made it work. The first day she was here was forecast for the nicest, so we took the boys out to the Oakland Zoo and while cloudy, the rain was kept at bay.

On Sunday morning it was over to the Chabot Space & Science Center where we have a membership. The boys have gotten a lot better at sitting through planetarium shows, and that was definitely a highlight of our visit. The boys also had a lot of fun upstairs doing some of the more interactive exhibits. It was nice getting early before the rain picked up and it got busy, and it meant we could leave midday and still have time to go out to lunch elsewhere.

I took off from work for the next couple of days to spend with my mother and the boys, and those were a bit less exciting and gave us all time to relax and spend time together. On Tuesday we went to an indoor play area and then we off to swim class where Aaron graduated to the next level! It was nice to have my mother there for that, he was so proud to show off his graduation ribbon and the card he received for advancing. On Wednesday morning we got the sad news that one of her cats had fallen gravely ill, so that was quite the downer to conclude the visit with as I took her to the airport. Still, it was a nice visit overall, I’m glad she was able to get some nice time with the boys.

Work has been going well, and after a cooped up January, I made my way down to the IBM Silicon Valley Lab for a day to catch up with a colleague and attend a on-site division all hands. That same week I went up to San Francisco to meet up with a university student I met through an open source webinar back in December, which was a lot of fun. It reminded me how lucky I am to be in a role that gives me the opportunity to work with students whose curiosity and brains are always inspiring. Don’t listen to the “get off my lawn” types, our future is in good hands with the “kids these days”.

The day I was in San Francisco I met up with MJ in the evening to go to The Exploratorium for an after-party for the NANOG conference he was attending and was taking place locally. It wasn’t quite a date night, since it was a work event for him and I wandered off to explore exhibits on my own while he talked shop, but it was still nice for the two of us to go out as adults without the kids for a bit, and we did have some nice vintage streetcar rides together before heading home for the night. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the opportunity to catch up on time for a date night over Valentine’s Day either, since that’s when my mother was visiting, and MJ was fighting off food poisoning for several days anyway. I hope we can do something nice together soon.

In all, I’d say February was a nice on-ramp to the coming months that look to be quite busy. March begins and ends with travel for me, and the spring and summer are always full of activities.

So we did the really logical thing this month: We rented a temporary storage unit nearby and started cleaning out the garage so we could begin using the space more effectively.

WHAT?!

But actually, it’s not the worst idea we’ve ever had. And it’s all part of a master plan. We’re going slowly, and it’s finally moving the needle on several projects inside the house that we need space in the garage for. It’s also requiring us to slow down a bit on weekends and not pack in so many adventures and outings that need to be planned. We build Lego, we do a storage run, the boys ride their bikes, I read for a bit, we start a 3d print, and get some satisfaction from actually making progress.

At least, that’s the idea. It doesn’t feel like we’ve gotten much done, and I really don’t enjoy spending so much time on our stuff, but I think we’re heading in the right direction.

But you know us, we haven’t actually stayed home all month.

We went up to San Francisco early in the month for a couple of quests. First, was to get Aaron a Clipper Card. Now that he’s five, he has to pay for his bus rides on AC Transit and for BART, though at reduced rates. A Clipper Card allows for this to be done easily, and since the boys love public transit, the ritual of getting their first Clipper Card is a whole adventure. For Adam we got it at Embarcadero Station, but this time we went up on a Saturday and the hours at Ferry Building were much better for our visit, and that’s where we got Aaron’s card!

From there we took a vintage streetcar and a bus over to North Beach where we had lunch at Original Joe’s, which struck me as a bit fancy for a lunch with kids, but surprised me with the family friendly feel and good Italian American food, which I’ve struggled to find in California. I suspect we’ll be back. But why were we in North Beach? The second quest! I happened upon a Smith Corona Skyriter on Facebook Marketplace, and made arrangements to buy it from the fellow selling it in North Beach. I don’t need another typewriter. It’s a model I already have! But I love the Skyriter, this is a different year and case than I have, and it came with the original manual! It needs some cleaning and a new ribbon, but otherwise seems in find condition. I’ll write about it once I get it going.

Then one evening when MJ was working from home (no evening commute!) I fed the boys dinner early and we went over to the Oakland Zoo for the Glowfari. The boys and I went with a couple of our au pairs, past and present, back in November, but MJ hadn’t seen it yet. We forewent tickets to the actual zoo grounds, and instead did the zoo train, which didn’t require zoo admission, just ride tickets and with our membership parking was free. Plus, the boys and I didn’t see the ride area or take the zoo train on our last visit! We kept the boys up a little late that night, but it was a lot of fun, and I’m glad we got to loop MJ in on the lantern fun too, even if it was just a taste.

And did you notice that passing mention of a 3D printer? MJ and I have talked about getting a 3D printer for years. Of course we have, we’re totally the kind of people who would have one. But we also knew the burden it would bring. We didn’t want a cheap one, so we’d invest in a nice one. We needed to have space for it, and all the stuff that comes with it. So MJ dove into research mode for a few months and we ended up ordering a Bambu Lab H2D and a bunch of filament over the holidays. I’ll write about this more too, including some of our first prints, but it’s been a nice diversion from storage and some of the more stressful life stuff lately. I’ve started playing around with FreeCAD to for when I’m ready to transition from silly toys and things to some things I want to create myself.

It’s all celebration though, he’s always been a kind person, but he’s grown into a curious little kid who we have a lot of fun with. This past year he’s really gotten into building worlds in Minecraft, and has generally built upon his previous curiosity of how everything works into coming up with really interesting conclusions based on his new found knowledge. He’s made major progress at school, and while he still leans on me a lot, I am seeing sprouts of independence and big brother leadership in him as he can complete a lot of daily tasks himself, and has started teaching Aaron how to play games (both video and board/card games).

Given his love of Minecraft, we went with that theme for his birthday. Since we were coming back to California just a couple days before his family birthday party here, I ordered the supplies while we were in Philly and just brought them all home. This also allowed me to grab some cupcake picks from the stash and put them in for some flair at a little birthday party we had with grandpa on his actual birthday while we were still in Philly. That night, we went to our favorite Italian place in town were he got a candle in some ice cream too.

Back in California, he reminded me that he wanted a “Sniffer cake”. A sniffer is a six-legged shaggy cow thing that we all kind of fell in love with because they’re so hilarious. They aren’t wildly popular like some of the animals in Minecraft, so there were limits to what I could do with that theme in mind, and a whole sniffer cake was not feasible. The options for Minecraft cakes were also limited, so instead I got creative. He likes chocolate cake and the Minecraft Cherry Blossom Garden Lego set has sniffers in it, so maybe sniffers like cherries? A chocolate cake with cherries on top it is! And Adam already had that Lego set, but I bought a second one so I could decorate the cake accordingly. It was a really busy cake, but I think I hit the mark.

Complete with a sniffer chomping on a cherry.

I also found a plastic toy sniffer online, which came out with the cake and the boys have enjoyed playing with.

Joining us for our family birthday party and all this Minecraft stuff was two of our former au pairs Claudia and Rebeca, Claudia’s husband, and our new au pair Ana. It was a fun afternoon, and people stayed into the evening catching up and playing with the boys, so it was a really nice day for him.

Onward to life as a seven year old!

Fortunately, the snow returned couple times during our trip, even though one storm fizzled out a bit and turned to ice. The boys enjoyed cleaning ice off the car and shoveling the driveway. I’m glad someone did!

Then on New Year’s Day we woke up to more snow! It wasn’t much in any of these little storms, but it was enough for them to have fun running around in and throwing snowballs, and that was plenty for them.

We made it downtown twice this trip, the first was on the last day of Hanukkah when we went to City Hall to visit the Christmas Village open air market. Notably, they have a stall that sells vegan cannoli, which means once a year MJ can enjoy them. Coming down the weekend before Christmas meant that it was pretty packed though, and the crowds made it a bit difficult to really enjoy. The boys would have liked to go on the carousel but none of us would have enjoyed the lines to get tickets AND to ride it. We ended up going over to a nearby pizzeria for lunch instead of fighting crowds at the on-site eatery, and then made our way over to The Wanamaker Building to stand in line for the Christmas light show.

Wanamaker’s has an interesting history. Founded in 1861, Wanamaker’s was one of the first department stores in the United States, and made several innovations in the realm of retail. After changing hands, the brand finally saw an end in 1995 when it was turned into a Hecht’s, and in 2006 it was turned into a Macy’s. Macy’s closed in the spring of 2025, leaving the building vacant. In spite of changing hands, Macy’s kept up a Wanamaker tradition of a free Christmas light show, and it was believed that as the era of department stores came to a close, so would that tradition. The building is a historic landmark, so there are limitations as to what can be done with it, but there was never a guarantee that new owners would allow open public access like the department stores had. Fortunately, they decided to keep up the tradition of the light show for at least one more year in 2025, and we finally got to enjoy the vintage light show that MJ had enjoyed when he was a kid. The future of this light show is uncertain as the building closes for a couple years for renovations by the new owners, so I was glad that we got to see it.

We also learned that there was a Dickens Village upstairs that I hear included vintage animatronic figures as you walk through the story of A Christmas Carol, but it required free, timed tickets that were sold out for the day. They also had an indoor market, which due to capacity tracking in the building was a much more pleasant experience than the outdoor market and we picked up a few things. From there, we hopped on the train and headed home.

We waited until after Christmas to do some of our bigger shopping, like our stops at Ikea and the King of Prussia Mall, but the mall was still a bit of a mad house. In spite of the demise of shopping malls in the United States, King of Prussia is thriving, and growing. For this visit, we had a little shopping to do, and while we were there we had lunch at Netflix House Philadelphia. Netflix House is the latest in “experiences” popping up in malls, amusingly in places like the aforementioned vacant department stores. Netflix House has a diner-like restaurant and bar where the dishes are all themed based on shows and movies from Netflix, and then you go downstairs to huge displays that reflect their various hit shows and movies, and a free theater (with timed ticket) featuring some of their movies. Of course there’s a very busy gift shop, and then paid activities like a VR experience , mini-golf, and a Wednesday-themed carnival and arcade. The mini-golf was sold out for more than a week, and even with those tickets there was a line to get in.

I love this trend. Like most people, we do a lot of shopping online now, and the loss of traditional department stores has not been much of a loss to us. The joke with Macy’s downtown going out of business last year was: “Such a beautiful location, but I haven’t been to there in years.” “No one has, that’s why it closed.” But sold out experiences at Netflix House? That’s what we want now. So much so that it’s the place I suggested meeting up with my friend Stephen who happened to be in town for the holidays too! It was still winter break for students, but it was a weekday and the place was still packed, just like when our whole family went over the weekend. I think during our next trip we’ll check out Bluey House in Plymouth Meeting.

My second visit downtown was on our final week there. I took a couple early morning work meetings and then packed up my work laptop to hop on a train with our au pair and the boys. SEPTA Regional Rail is nice for working on and I’d queued up a bunch of work that would be easy to do in-transit, which worked out nicely. Once we arrived at Suburban Station, it was a quick walk over to The Franklin Institute, where we all got tickets and I got the three of them settled into their museum adventures. I then walked over to Parkway Central Library next door. You see, I learned from a podcast a couple months ago that Grip the raven resides there, in their Rare Books Department. Grip was once the pet of Charles Dickens’ and was made immortal by his novel Barnaby Rudge. Edgar Allan Poe was a reviewer of the novel, and it’s said that the presence of Grip in the book, as well as a subsequent meeting with Dickens and learning that Grip was a real bird, was an inspiration for his most famous poem, The Raven. Quite the bird! I had to meet her.

I also had the pleasure of arriving in time for the daily 11AM tour of the Rare Books Department itself. Among various other treasures, I saw a real page from a Gutenberg Bible and a writing desk that once was owned by Charles Dickens. Just across from the Rare Books Department they also had an exhibit about death called Or Not to Be which is what actually drew me to come down and visit Grip on a work day, rather than waiting until our next trip. It was a nice little exploration.

I then spent a couple hours working there in the library before meeting up with them at The Franklin to do a late lunch and check out a science show. It was then back to work for me, while the kids spent a bit more time at the museum before taking a 4PM train back home.

And of course, we spent a bunch of time with family. The boys got to visit with grandpa a bunch of times, including a couple of nice meals together. The boys got to enjoy some visits with their cousin Sammy and Aunt Irina. Our trip also included a jaunt over to New Jersey for lunch with a cousin, and then some time visiting with her husband at their house where we ate diner cupcakes (the BEST), MJ diagnosed a problem with her TV, and the boys enjoyed playing with their power lift recliner. MJ and I even were able to go out for a couple of nice meals together on our own, including a very nice dinner downtown at Buddakan. I also spent one evening on my own to finally see Wicked: For Good in the theater, which was quite a treat.

Back at home got to do lots of Lego, play with the Hanukkah train, and we made a little progress on some house projects. I also ended up with an infection that made me a lot more tired than I expected halfway through our trip. I was recovering from a sinus infection when we arrived, and ended up with a secondary, antibiotic-resistant infection elsewhere in my body just a few days after I concluded the round of antibiotics I had been on from the sinus infection. I actually thought I was just tired from all our adventures, birthdays, and holiday stuff, so I blamed my brain when I melted into the couch while MJ worked on things with the boys over the weekend. A visit to Urgent Care on Monday and a pile of tests proved that the pain I had developed that day was indeed an infection. Time for a second round of antibiotics! Somewhat amusingly, I had just begun reading Everything is Tuberculosis, and the irony of reading a book that spends a lot of time talking about antibiotic resistance while fighting off an antibiotic-resistent infection myself was not lost on me. And both also made me acutely aware of how fragile we are in this arms race with bacteria and infections. Thankfully, my infection was uncomplicated and this round of antibiotics knocked it out in a few days and I was feeling a lot better by the time we traveled home on January 8th.

I also had the unfortunate situation of battling a sinus infection while figuring out the answers to all these questions. I always forget how painful those are, and how debilitating the sinus headaches can be. My stomach also didn’t respond to the antibiotics very well this time. Oof. When I say this was a doozy of a holiday season, I hope you get where I’m coming from. We figured it out though!

First: Prep! I’ve already written that we put up lights and decorations, and set up the model trail that we set up for Hanukkah. I realize that Christmas holiday glitter has infiltrated our Hanukkah quite a bit with all of this, but I love holiday glitter and this is just how it’s going to be in our house. Besides, Christmas got the glitter from solstice celebrations. It’s fair all game.

1st Night

To kick off Hanukkah we invited Rebeca over to celebrate with us, and so she could be around for the boys opening the present from her.

I also sent MJ and the boys out earlier in the day to hunt for some jelly doughnuts so we could enjoy a sufganiyot-ish treat this first evening.

2nd Night

Dreidels, gelt, and Hanukkah art!

A latke and an menorah, by Aaron

The boys were relatively self-sufficient with their playing with the dreidels this year, which was fun, aside from the inevitable fights that broke out over strategic dropping rather than spinning of the dreidel to get the desired outcome, hah! They both got the hang of spinning it though.

3rd Night

Around 3:30 in the afternoon, a collision occurred on Interstate 580 near our house that caused a car to be inexplicably vaulted from the flat bed of a tow truck to the BART train tracks that reside in the middle of the highway. It’s incredibly bizarre, I hope details are released at some point as to what they believe happened because it would be fascinating to know how it was even possible (update). The one thing we do know is that it it caused a traffic NIGHTMARE all evening. Adam was scheduled to meet with the leads of a program he’s been enrolled in to celebrate his graduation, and they were a full 90 minutes late – for a 90 minute visit. Still, they made it and we got to celebrate!

Alas, a family friend who was scheduled to come by did rethink her visit into that traffic nightmare. That meant that the latkes I was preparing (recipe here) for her visit had one fewer person to feed, and it was a bit of an anticlimactic conclusion to my latke preparation. Aaron and I really enjoyed them though! And MJ was able to enjoy some leftovers before we left for Philly.

That evening the boys had a lot of fun listening to the news helicopters fly overhead, and following the news about the car on the BART tracks, including watching a live broadcast as the rescue truck with a crane lifted the car off the tracks.

I enjoyed my third night of Hanukkah beer with my latkes and apple sauce.

4th Night

Packing for our trip, and managing a chaotic week that included work, taking the cat to two different specialists, and an emergency dermatologist appointment for Aaron who has a knee wound that’s taking longer than expected to heal. We did presents and lights and it was lovely, but I didn’t take pictures because the evening was a lot.

5th Night

On to Philadelphia! My solution to in-flight Hanukkah was giving the boys a couple gifts on the plane that they could use on the plane. So they each got to enjoy a new game for the Nintendo Switch. Aaron got a Bluey game and Adam got a Cars game that he’d been eyeing at a game shop in Hayward, that MJ had the foresight to pick up as a Hanukkah gift.

When we finally got to the townhouse in Philly, we lit the candles for the fifth night and munched on our quick dinner picked up from Wawa. Then it was straight to bed!

6th Night

I phoned it in with present wrapping this night because while I had presents available to give the boys, I had a busy day at work and zero time to wrap presents. After going out for dinner, we lit the candles and the boys got to open the presents I had tossed into a gift bag with some tissue paper on top. Voila! Everyone was happy.

7th Night

Things were a bit more together today, but it helped that it was a weekend. Lights were lit, and Aaron got his favorite present of the holiday: a really simple ice cream maker. He’s been talking about it for over a month, and has kept talking about it, so he really seems to be enjoying it.

8th Night

We spent the day downtown, and then joined grandpa, his aunt Irina, and cousin Sammy for lighting the candles the final night. With our menorahs full of candles, it was great to have family over, and we all had an enjoyable evening.

And thus concludes Hanukkah for the year! Now that I’ve done the split coast thing once, I think I’m in a much better position to continue it when the need next arises, but with it landing in early December in 2026, this probably won’t be that year. Thank goodness.

The day after we got home, I grabbed tickets to Oakland Zoo Glowfari. The tickets for weekends tend to sell out quickly, and it’s busy, so I decided that we wouldn’t wait and would just grab a weeknight far enough before the December holidays that it wouldn’t be too crowded. So the boys and I went with Gaby, our new au pair Ana, and then their former au pair Rebeca joined us! It was a ton of fun, the structures are beautiful and there are a lot of them. The first area we explored was a future of Oakland-themed village which had all kinds of great Oakland landmarks, including the Tribune tower, the boot from Children’s Fairyland, and a Chabot Space & Science Center observatory.

Plus, they had a BART train you could go inside! And run inside, which the boys did, of course.

From there we walked through areas devoted to insects and African animals. Of particular interest to every kid there was a tile you could jump on to trigger a stink bug to spray “smoke” out of his rear end. Oh boy.

We then met up with Rebeca and got a bunch of great photos of the boys and three generations of au pairs. I’m really glad we were able to do that before Gaby went home! With Rebeca, we took the Gondola up to the California Trail to explore the ocean part of the Glowfari. Up there the bubbles filled with “smoke” were a big hit with the kids. They were pretty cool. We didn’t get to go on the Zoo train which gets you to even more light up goodies, but since just train tickets are required for that, I’m hoping that we can go with MJ some time in January to just do that.

I mentioned Gaby leaving, and that was a pretty big deal for all of us. She’s our first au pair to actually go home at the conclusion of her term (the first got married, the second stayed to go to school in the US). As a result, the boys still see their past au pairs! We’re really going to miss her. I think we got really lucky with our new au pair though, the boys immediately connected with her and she’s been great so far.

The following weekend we joined a bunch of other Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) fans at Rockridge station for Sweaterfest. It was a whole little celebration with BART crafts and other related pop-ups with little activities for kids and photo opportunities. At the end, they took a big group photo with us in our sweaters! MJ wore one from when we attended a couple years ago, Adam and I had matching BART sweaters from this year, and Aaron donned this season’s BART winter hat (no shirts in his size this year). We got to ride the BARTmobile (a hilarious train with tires that use used in parades and other events), and managed to get in the group photo.

Inside the BARTmobile!

We checked out the craft table briefly and the boys got to jump around inside a big inflatable winter bubble. It would have been nice to arrive earlier since things closed fairly promptly around 3PM, but we still had fun, and it was probably for the best that we didn’t go on such a long adventure, did I mention December was very busy?

The next day, we went to the Great Train Show, which was set up at the Alameda County Fairgrounds. This is also an event we’d gone to before, I think it was last summer? Last time, MJ realized he knows one of the folks who regularly attends with one of the model train clubs, as they used to work together, so he likes to use it as an opportunity to say hello.

Plus, it’s a great place to shop for model trains to expand our Hanukkah train layout! Sadly, the engine on ours wasn’t working well. In spite of buying it just five years ago and only taking it out for the winter holidays, think it was dropped a few too many times by small kids. We brought it to the train show to test it on their test track, and that’s where it completely failed. We tried to get a replacement engine, which is lovely! But will take some work to get it going with our equipment. Still, the fellow who sold us the engine also had a really cute Hanukkah box car that we bought along with it. And maybe I’ll see if I can get our other engine repaired.

The boys also got to check out a couple of retired maintenance cars that are kept running by members of the West Coast Railroaders Group. Some people have boats and sail over water. Some people buy old rail maintenance cars and ride down tracks through beautiful forests. MJ spent some time talking with them as the boys kept themselves occupied by sitting in the cars and playing with the controls.

It was a fun afternoon, but I was tired. I had developed a sinus infection that was being treated with antibiotics, but I think what I needed was rest, and not a weekend full of train adventures,. I was also prepping everything for Hanukkah, which had me up on a ladder outside hanging Hanukkah lights during this time too, something I thought I’d skip this year but ultimately wanted to do because I love holiday lights. And prepping to come back to Philadelphia. It’s no wonder I was feeling worn out.

We’re in Philadelphia now, and while I didn’t take much time off of work through the winter holidays, I am grateful to be able to focus on more project work that tends to bring me more peace and calm. I’ll try not to overdo it activity-wise while we’re here. I think I’m finally over the sinus infection, but both my body and mind could use some time to relax and recharge. Maybe some time reading a book by the fire. We’ll see how that goes.

We also picked up some cake at the airport that he could enjoy on the flight. When we boarded, wearing his new birthday t-shirt, he also got to enjoy a quick little tour of the cockpit. Plus, the change in time zone means he had a 27 hour birthday. Not bad!

His actual birthday party was held on Sunday when we were all back home. Guest-wise, our previous au pairs, Rebeca and Gaby, joined us and our new au pair Ana. As requested, it was Paw Patrol themed!

It was a fun afternoon. Maybe next year we’ll extend the birthday to some kids Aaron’s age, but pandemic habits die hard, and it’s been a pretty busy season for all of us.

Aaron has been enjoying his new-found access to video games. He’s starting out with a Paw Patrol game and Mario Kart, but I expect he’ll quickly graduate to some more complicated ones. I’m super proud of how much he’s matured in this past year. He’s doing great in Transitional Kindergarten at the public school, and he surprises me all the time with what he’s learning and understanding about the world.