Because of how it moves around on the Gregorian calendar, there is always a chance that we’ll be spending part or all of Hanukkah in Philadelphia over the winter school break. It presented an interesting challenge, how do we give the big gifts like their new bikes if the bikes are in California during Hanukkah? And for smaller things, do we just plan on bringing a bunch of gifts home instead of keeping them at our vacation home? We got creative, and brought along an extra suitcase just in case we ended up bringing things home (we did!).

Now, one of the things about winter break is that the kids are home from school, so we revisited our summer strategies of keeping them occupied. During this two and a half week trip, our au pair also decided to take some much deserved vacation over New Years and so that left us with most of Hanukkah just the four of us, and nearby family. This year it began on the evening of Christmas, and with most things closed the boys and I got to work on making a bunch of sugar cookies from my family recipe. We quickly discovered that we don’t own a rolling pin (our supplies are rather limited there) so we used a water bottle. The cookies came out great, I forgot how much I like them. I ate a bunch.

For dinner MJ and I got Wawa hoagies and I tried my hand at making latkes. We purchased a food processor a few days before so I wouldn’t have to manually shred potatoes and onions like I did last time when I made them in California. What I didn’t think about much was oil, so I just used what I had: vegetable oil. I came to regret that decision. Turns out, using vegetable oil for latkes makes them cook much too quickly and I ended up with burned latkes, only a few of them were even edible. It also filled the house with an oil smell that lasted for hours. Thankfully, my second attempt at the tail end of Hanukkah was much more successful with Canola oil and lots of ventilation.

Also, we discovered that Aaron loves latkes.

We did some Hanukkah crafts, including a table runner that the boys enjoyed coloring and putting up some small lights around the house.

The boys fell in love with sparklers over the summer, so I joked about and then produced “Hanukkah sparklers” which we played with in the snow on the second night, which is also the night they were treated by grandpa coming over and doing gifts with them. This year we also gave Adam the opportunity to help with candles, which he was really excited about.

Of course the Hanukkah train came out too! The boys are treated with year-around trains in Philly now that we have a Lego train that we put together over the summer, so we temporarily put that one away so we could enjoy the more traditional model train.

Next year there’s a good chance we’ll be splitting Hanukkah between coasts, so that will be an interesting one!

We were greeted with snow! The boys had seen flurries before, but they’d never actually had the opportunity to play in the snow, and that was remedied with this visit. They shoved a little, tried to ride their bikes in it, and delighted in throwing snowballs at me. I made the mistake of shoveling the driveway because I was worried about ice, and that set back my recovery by a couple days, but it didn’t tear anything, which I’m grateful for. It did end up being bitterly cold for several days though, and I’m glad we had recently bought some winter coats for them both.

I took the last week of the year off to enjoy Hanukkah, which I’ll write about later, and go on some adventures with the kids. The first was to Fonthill Castle in Doylestown. First we stopped for brunch at nearby Cross Keys Diner and it was absolutely perfect, it was everything I love about little Pennsylvania diners. Then it was off to the castle! I had been to the sister museum, Mercer Museum, a couple of times, including with the boys two years ago. The castle was a whole new experience. The museum is a winding path of all kinds of collected items from the early 20th century, including a lot of every day things, offering a real snapshot into life back then. The castle is where Henry Mercer actually lived, building what was a farmhouse into a castle of concrete. It’s just as strange and whimsical as the museum, which unexpected discoveries at every turn. We happened to pick up a children’s book about the castle when we were at the museum the last time, so we had some idea what to expect, and it was fun to match up the photos and drawings in the book with what we were seeing in person.

The whole place was absolutely fascinating. I loved how natural light was so effectively used in places like the library and map room, since electricity was still rather new and most rooms would have been lit by a single light bulb. In one room he had real cuneiform tablets built into the columns from thousands of years ago that he picked up on his adventures around the world. We also did a little hunt ourselves after MJ read a Hanukkah display that mentioned he had a menorah tile somewhere in the house – we found it, on the ceiling!

Aaron got a picture of his stuffed dog, also a purchase we made the last time we visited the museum, by Rollo’s Stairs, a series of stairs that the dog had run through and left his footprints in while the concrete was still drying.

Upon completion of our indoor exploration, we took some time to explore the grounds. One of the photos from the book had the tree-lined driveway pictured, so we took a nice stroll down the driveway to experience it.

It was probably the warmest day of our trip, so the boys also enjoyed running outside in the grass around the castle, which also allowed me to get a few more photos of the whole castle in all its glory.

Since both MJ and I had off on New Years’ Eve, we took the opportunity to hop on the regional train down to Philadelphia, an adventure the boys constantly ask for. Our first stop was to see the Ice Dinosaurs exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences. We love this museum and Aaron really loves dinosaurs, so we knew it was a must on our visit downtown. It was a hit with all of us!

From there, we took a bus over toward City Hall for lunch at Iron Hill Brewery, and then walked up Market street to visit The SEPTA store to pick up a bunch of transit goodies, and also look at their exhibits. They have a full size PCC trolley in the downstairs lobby, and also various small exhibits scattered around. In front of the store itself there are a couple of model train displays to enjoy. From there, we walked up to City Hall, which I’d never actually walked through before, and then visited the outdoor Holiday Market still going on. I am certain it has shrunk since Christmas, but there were still several booths still set up and the boys got to watch people ice skating. Now they really want to go ice skating. Plus, MJ found a cannoli with vegan filling, so he could eat it! Turns out, you can do just about anything with enough oil and sugar.

We filled the rest of the week with activities like free building with Lego, which it turns out Aaron really, really enjoys, and Adam and I finished our first Light My Bricks build, which was a lot of fun. We started with a small car we knew we could finish on our trip and took the other kits (R2-D2 and Tantive IV) home with us to California to work on them here.

The boys are also enamored with science kits, so they received a few of them from their grandpa for Hanukkah. One of them was a volcano experiment that had you first make the volcano and let it dry for a few days, and then use it for exciting eruptions!

And the Friday before we left was an exciting day: The release of “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” on Netflix in the US! The boys and I have been so excited about this, and watched all the other movies leading up to it in preparation. So first thing on Friday morning we all snuggled up on the couch and watched. I even paused for a little while to write about it on my fan site!

Our evening on Friday concluded with a final dusting of snow and dinner at our favorite Italian place in town, a beautiful conclusion to the trip and a nice distraction from all the house close up tasks we had the following morning.

For the trip home, I was four weeks post-op and thankfully had the ability to handle suitcases to a limited degree. The pain was definitely still there, but the flight didn’t add to it, and we all got home safely and on time.

It worked out really well, and on Saturday we were joined by our first au pair (who got married and stayed in the US), their second au pair (who is now going to school in the US) and their current au pair! Maybe next year we’ll do a birthday with other kids, but none of us were ready for that yet.

As requested, he had a cake with dark blue frosting and a Chase from Paw Patrol decorating theme.

And his au pairs brought him gifts, which is always fun.

He’s really grown up in these past few months. I think being in preschool is helping him, but generally he seems to have just really taken off conversationally. He’s also more strongly communicating his preference for things, like dinosaurs and drawing, so much drawing. I love the little person he’s growing into.

Beyond the birthday, December didn’t exactly unfold the way we expected. I had an emergency appendectomy the day before the party, which I’ll write about soon, and it knocked me out of commission until our trip to Philadelphia on the 18th. But before we left we made time to go over to our favorite donut shop, Rudy’s Donuts, which was closing for good. I’m really bummed, it was so good and we could walk there as a nice Saturday or Sunday adventure. But the owners are retiring and I that’s certainly a conclusion of business that I can respect. The news had gotten out about their pending closure though, and the weekend we went was the weekend before they closed and the line looped around inside the building! I can’t imagine how it was their final weekend.

As we packed for Philadelphia the boys got to pack their new Lego luggage! We picked the pair of suitcases up at Costco and they came with matching backpacks. This was the first trip where the boys would have their “own” luggage (what ended up in the bags was only partially theirs). In general, it was a success, though there were several times at the airport where they asked adults to pull them for a while.

The boys are growing up!

As far as the drive up goes, we learned over the summer that the boys do not enjoy long car rides, so three hours would be quite the challenge for all of us. We made plans ahead of time to stop halfway through for lunch, so at least then the drive would be split into two roughly 90 minute chunks. We ended up at Suzy Q’s Hometown Diner in Jupiter, Florida. It was perfect, we all found food that we enjoyed. In the car I sat in the back with the boys so I could help keep them entertained, and we played with a trouble-making puppet dinosaur, got out some Colorforms, and scoured the road for colorful cars and interesting landmarks. We arrived at our hotel in Melbourne the late afternoon and quickly discovered that the air conditioning in one of the rooms wasn’t working, and maintenance had to come by while we were at dinner.

For dinner we met with my Aunt Pam and her new husband Gil at Marker 99. It was a pleasure to catch up, and I was so excited for them to meet the boys, even if they checked out fairly early in the dinner to play on their phones. It was nighttime, but we did also enjoy the views over the intracoastal. After dinner, Adam and I went down to the end of a pier at the restaurant and looked at stars.

The next day we planned on spending the afternoon with my Uncle Don and Aunt Tanya, but we quickly discovered that the air conditioning problems hadn’t been resolved and we had to change rooms. Following this, the boys were feeling a bit on edge and we figured it might be better to just have a pure vacation day at the hotel. But we had to eat too! We had a fantastic breakfast at The Blueberry Muffin just down A1A from our hotel. I went with the blueberry pancakes, but we all found food to enjoy, and we also picked up a pumpkin pie to bring to Thanksgiving dinner the next day. After breakfast, it was down to the pool!

This chill day meant we had a fair amount of time in our room, which we filled with drawing and some Colorform games (mostly sorry and Snakes & Ladders), as well as working with Adam on a Lego Mustang that we had picked up at Walmart precisely for this reason. There was a fair amount of TV too, and while watching some around 5PM little Aaron fell asleep in a chair while eating an apple. The day off was the right move.

On Thanksgiving we began our day at the beach where Aaron build more sand castles and found a crab. Adam and I braved the surf again and had a bunch of fun in the water. We then rinsed off and made our way over to the pool for a little while before going back to our room to get showered and changed for Thanksgiving dinner.

Thanksgiving was held at my Uncle Frank and Aunt Amy’s house, with my Grandpa and his wife Jo, and my Uncle Don and Aunt Tanya also joining in the festivities. It was absolutely perfect, even if the boys were a little energetic. The food was great, and so was the conversation. We were also incredibly grateful that they were willing to host us on such short notice. It was great to catch up with everyone and have them meet the boys, especially having them visit with their great grandfather. Amy even gave the boys a tour of the back yard.

Friday was our last full day in Florida, and the weather was a little gloomy. We began the day by visiting a couple local parks to see if we could spot some manatees, which we didn’t succeed at, but we did see some birds, lizards, and rabbits! We then stopped for lunch and that’s when it started pouring out. While eating, we decided that the poor weather meant that we should take my Aunt Amy’s advice and drive up to The Dinosaur Store for the perfect afternoon visiting dinosaurs at their exhibits!

I think all kids like dinosaurs, but Aaron loves dinosaurs. Going to an exhibit with fossils alongside full size colorful recreations and scenes was an absolute delight. He ran around excitedly pointing at things and rushing between each next great exhibit. We got the tickets for the “Adventure Zone” which was an unlimited arcade area, which the boys enjoyed and I guess it was a nice spot for them to enjoy while I scoured the amazing store they had there (I picked up a moon rock and some fossil earrings), but it was a little underwhelming. There were also some live animals in the zone, which is where we finally saw an alligator! And several beautiful snakes. Still, the upstairs rooms with the museum really were the draw for us.

Our flight on Saturday out of Orlando was quite late, so we got up and went straight to the pool for a final dip.

MJ grabbed some lunch at a pizzeria across from the hotel, and then it was all the packing and packing while the boys ate lunch and watched TV in the room. We got to the Orlando airport suitably early to clear security, ride the air train, watch the air train a bunch, and spend a little time in a lounge getting some snacks. It was nice to not be rushing, and our flight home was uneventful.

It was a great trip, I’m so glad we went. It also made us feel a lot more secure in doing other trips with the boys. We definitely learned that having a small stash of toys/activities for the hotel room during gap time and healthy snacks was key, and to just expect sleep problems (even my own) and cope with it accordingly.

Thankfully, we didn’t have grand plans for my birthday, and instead I was simply welcomed with a beautifully themed cake as we celebrated with just the immediate family and our former au pair who dropped by with flowers. And no candles, because no one wants someone with a cold blowing on a cake, regardless of the infection status of everyone else.

My birthday present was quite the treat though, tickets to Niles Canyon Railway on their steam train! For two weeks in the future, which was good, because there was no way we were going out on my birthday.

On Tuesday of that week was the culmination of a TON of work: IBM Z Day. I wasn’t a track lead this year, but I put together the developer journey and consulted on several sessions, and I gave a talk in the Academic Symposium with Matt Germonprez of the CHAOSS project about the importance of open source software. I think the session went well, and thankfully I was feeling well enough for it.

On Wednesday night Rosh Hashanah began! I made honey cake with the boys, but unfortunately our bread maker broke and the new one didn’t arrive until Thursday so we couldn’t make round challah before the holiday. We participated in evening services virtually after the boys went to bed, and the next morning I took the boys out to the park to run around for a bit before morning services at 10:30AM, which we also joined virtually. The bread maker also arrived, and while strictly not appropriate to bake challah on Rosh Hashanah, we did anyway. A round challah! Which came out pretty decently. Plus, being able to bake the round challah together helped get over some of the disappointment of missing the fancy challah baking event the weekend before.

In the late afternoon, we cut up a bunch of fruit and figured out how to extract the seeds from a pomegranate to enjoy some fruit and honey.

Happy New Year! We’d like to finally attend services in-person again next year, but things just didn’t come together for it this year, especially with everyone being so sick in the days leading up to it.

If I’m honest, it was a lot for one week. I really wish we hadn’t gotten sick, but with little ones in school it’s tricky to avoid it, as we’d also discover two weeks later when we all got sick again. Oof!

I mentioned that the boys had been earning badges from the local library through a free program to inspire kids to do challenges and activities. They each earned four badges, and it was a lot of fun for all of us. I’m not sure I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy the library programs from the Bucks County library system, but their branches are incredibly kid-friendly and the play areas are more extensive than what I see in most of the San Francisco bay area. My sister in law Irina suggested it’s because there are more outdoor activities year-around in California, so there’s less of a need for a library on rainy or frigid days, and she may be right. The culture here in California generally seems to be more catered to adults and mature kids than young ones.

The Bensalem library definitely ramped up things for the summer, and Aaron particularly enjoyed a presentation from the Center for Aquatic Sciences where he got to pet a horseshoe crab.

In the evenings we also got really into some Lego builds. Aaron even helped out a little, but would mostly work on his creative Duplo creations while Adam and I focused on building a train, a firehouse, and a fire helicopter. I think we’re going to end up with a little Lego City there.

Seeing family is also obviously a big part of why we were there over the summer, so it was nice to head downtown one evening to have dinner with MJ’s cousin Lauren and her husband. I had met her husband once before, but only MJ could attend their wedding due to a bunch of unexpected circumstances last year. So it was our first time seeing them as a married couple. We met at Emmy Squared Pizza where I got the “Angel” pizza consisting of Truffleist mushroom cream, ricotta, mushrooms, and it was spectacular! I’m still dreaming of this pizza. And it was also great as leftovers. I think our only complaint would be that something went a little wrong with our order and we waited almost an hour for the adult food to come out, which made the boys a bit antsy as the evening wound down and they had finished their meal. It was nice to have the extra time to catch up though, and Adam got his wish of getting to see the sun set on the Philadelphia skyline so we could enjoy the beautiful nighttime lights of the city. He’s definitely my kid, I love those nighttime city skylines too.

In other family news, our regular visits with Irina and little Sam were a highlight of our trip. Sam and Aaron are roughly the same age, so it was nice for Aaron to have a summer buddy. One evening we were able to go over to their house to have pizza and catch up, and Aaron was absolutely enamored with her dog Maya, and both the boys enjoyed spending time with Olive the cat.

Animal-wise, our neighbors were rabbit-sitting, so one evening we went over there to catch up and get the latest neighborhood gossip while the boys got to play with the rabbit. Predictably, all of this has lead to a string of requests to get a pet. I really would love to, but we have a lot on our plate right now, and our extended visits to Philly definitely make having a pet tricky. We’ll see, I haven’t been pet-free in decades, and while the loss of Caligula still stings, the pull of getting another cat is getting stronger.

During our visit I also was able to sneak out one afternoon to meet with Kris, a former colleague from my Tyco days. We’ve loosely kept in touch via Facebook, but we hadn’t seen each other in over a decade. Some of my posts throughout the summer clued her in to the fact that we weren’t too far away from each other. It was a great to reconnect, and we’ve penciled in doing something more involved with the boys next time we’re in town.

The final Friday before we left we made our way back to the Churchville Nature Center for a moth-themed presentation and camp fire. It ran quite late, and I think the boys were on the young side to appreciate a lot of the introductory lecture, but they got to walk around outside at night, see some bugs, hear a screech owl, and finally roast a couple marshmallows over a camp fire. I did a lot of camping as a kid, but it’s hasn’t been something we’ve done yet, so it occurred to me that the boys hadn’t really experienced a camp fire before. What an oversight! There’s a campground not too far from here, maybe next summer we’ll spend more time in California and do a weekend adventure in a tent.

Our last day in town we did some final clothes shopping (tax-free in Pennsylvania!) and then turned picking up the rental car that we’d be taking to the airport the next day into one final adventure with a train ride to the rental car center at the airport. The plan had been for MJ and Adam to go down alone while Aaron and I went on our own adventures around town, but apparently there’s nothing more fun than taking a train, so we all went.

Some of my low-key stress around packing and preparing to leave bubbled up during our train ride, but I did my best to be present and enjoy the journey with everyone. I mostly succeeded until Avis was over an hour late with our rental and we had to sit at the rental car center trying to keep the boys entertained. I should have brought more snacks. Then the stress carried into Sunday as we closed up the house and began our journey home. I hope this gets easier as the kids get older, but I also need to keep working on strategies to manage this family travel stress, I hate that the conclusion of our visit is so tainted by such an elevated stress level when there were so many great moments throughout the summer.

I know it’s going to fly by. Indeed, a week has already gone. But it was a bit of a settling in week, and our au pair took the traveling opportunity to take a vacation and MJ spent the week in NYC for work, so I was here solo with the boys. I took Monday off from work to get the house step up, grab groceries, complete a bunch of tasks, and get our babysitter for the week settled in. We secured our babysitter through a service and it worked out really well, but even with the help it was a challenging week. Plus, I simply missed MJ and was grateful when he got back on Friday night.

All things considered, the boys did really well, but they were suddenly shifted into a very different place and schedule, so we had some tough moments and sleep wasn’t quite where it needed to be. On Monday I made up little cards with activities on them so the boys knew what options they had, from Play-Doh to playing outside in the sprinkler, and we really lucked out with hot, dry weather making all the options available to them. Still, they were stuck close to home. To help with this, one evening after work I took them out to Target (which they enjoy!), and another evening was spent the library and playground. The library was fun for me too, I decided not to bring physical books with me on this visit even though I have a couple in progress, and instead just requested the books for pickup at my local library here. It worked beautifully!

Since we put the boys together in a room recently, I also had to set that up. We arranged delivery of Aaron’s bed, but it didn’t arrive until Tuesday so I brought up the crib mattress to their room and Aaron slept on the floor for a couple nights. Not optimal, but we all survived and I was able to assemble his new bed on Tuesday evening and get the room all set up. The only remaining problem is how bright it is in the morning even with blackout curtains. The curtains simply don’t provide enough coverage, and they’re waking up much too early. We’ve ordered some more comprehensive window coverings and will install those soon.

There were also some bugs. A hole in our sliding screen door out to the deck let in wasps that made a small nest between the screen door and the glass door. This is not a new problem, so we had some wasp spray already and I soaked the nest and was rid of it by Wednesday. There were also tiny ants near that door, and when we picked up the ant traps at Target it was immediately clear that we aren’t the only ones with that problem, they were nearly out of stock! Yuck. It’ll take some time to finish eradicating the ants, but we’re making progress.

With our new found love of Lego, I had promised Adam we could get a battery-operated Lego train set once we got to Philly. He’s been watching videos on YouTube about this train and some others, so was pretty excited, and on Saturday we got to work on it, and swiftly got the engine done so we could actually run it on the track, hooray! We still have the other two passenger cars to build.

The rest of Saturday was spent close to home as MJ did a bunch of house tasks and then we spent the late afternoon and evening visiting with family. For dinner, we went out with MJ’s step sister and her son, and Aaron had some delightful cousin time. Afterwards, we went out for ice cream, which the boys managed to cover themselves in. Oof. It’s a good thing we still pack a change of clothes when we go out to eat.

Sunday we met up with them again to go downtown! The boys finally got to go on a SEPTA Regional Rail train, which they’ve been asking to do forever.

From Suburban station, we walked over to the Academy of Natural Sciences to see dinosaurs!

Last time we went was back in December and I think Aaron was a little surprised and scared at just how big dinosaurs were. Now a full 5 months later, he seems to have made peace with it and had a wonderful time. He also really loved being there with his cousin, who he’d insist would join him at various animal displays.

After the museum, the boys were delighted to take bus (SEPTA slinky bus!) over to Reading Terminal Market, which the boys had never been to and I hadn’t been to for years. I forgot how overwhelming it is there, but we managed to find food that we were all happy with and even found a table where all 6 of us fit. At the end we picked up some treats! We caught a 2PM train back home.

This week our au pair is back with us and we’re settling in to what we developed as our regular summertime routine. I’m working loosely 9AM-5PM east coast time and building out all our activities around that. Over the weekend we booked a weekend at the New Jersey shore, and bought tickets to a Phillies game that we’ll be attending with some family and friends later this month. Investing in a vacation home here was always a bit of a gamble, but I’m grateful we’re able to finally spend a bunch of time here, using it precisely for what we always intended. It should be a great summer.

The first was to a baseball game! The A’s are moving away from Oakland next year, which is heartbreaking. I wanted to get a few final games in before they move, but it was logistically difficult. So one day I took the afternoon off from work and hopped on BART to see a game. It was great!

I ate chicken nachos out of a helmet.

And had a delicious churro sundae.

And watched the A’s lose, but that’s OK. It was a delightful afternoon away.

As a solo activity it was OK, I think I prefer going with someone because there’s so much down time in sports and it’s really a more social activity. I think going to movies, museums, or other active exhibits or parks may be more my speed moving forward.

And I know I said solo time should be time that’s not work, but on a whim I went up to RSA 2024 recently with an Expo hall pass. I met with some folks and got some great work done, I’m glad that I went.

Then I got to the solo not work part! I took a lovely walk down Market street to check out the new fancy food hall attached to the new Ikea. It was really nice. I decided to check out Curry Up Now, an Indian street food spot that served up a delicious Saag Paneer And Chicken Tikka Masala burrito, along with a mango lassi. I really miss living in San Francisco, so even if it was a work visit, just getting back in my favorite place was refreshing. On my way back to BART I was also happy to discover that the entrance from BART to the mall has re-opened!

We’ll see where my solo plans take me moving forward. I really can’t let this time get de-prioritized again, my family deserves a happy and energetic mom, and I deserve a happy and energetic me.

I only had the pleasure of meeting Sherry once or twice and the boys never have, but a loss like this has ripple effects, and there was a heaviness to my journey. I felt bad that I couldn’t be physically present as MJ worked with her friends and their family to make arrangements.

Based on a variety of factors, her funeral ended up being after my trip and we decided that only MJ would go. He flew out on Thursday, just hours before I returned, so I didn’t get to see him, and we had a babysitter drop by in the early evening to fill in until my return. He came home Sunday night with stories about his aunt as he visited her home, the town she loved so much, and a bookshop she used to run. May her memory be a blessing.

Aunt Sher (right) at our wedding in 2013 and her mother, Ruth

With MJ away, I had the boys on my own for the weekend. On Saturday we took BART out to Dublin to visit a new playground that they absolutely loved, even if they didn’t love the half mile walk from BART to get there. Sunday was extremely warm, so we went on a water quest! The water hoses we had were cracked and basically unusable, so the boys and I went to our local hardware store in order to replace two of them, plus one of the stands they were on. When we got home we set them up and hooked up a new rainbow water toy in the yard and the boys had tons of fun running through it and turning it into a car wash for their Cozy Coupe.

In some ways it was a lot of fun to have the boys to myself, but it was also pretty tiring and I was eager to have MJ back. Plus, on Monday we had a Seder to prepare for!

Thankfully, MJ took off from work on Monday so he could recover from the trip and head up to San Francisco to pick up our Passover meal. When I was done with work at 4PM I got to work setting everything up. The boys are still quite picky about food, but Adam loves matzoh so it’s a fun time of year for him. The Seder was incredibly chaotic and I timed the food wrong again, but I think that’s part of the charm of family holiday dinners.

This year we also were able to hide the Afikoman and let the kids find it, which became a bit of a prolonged activity as the kids wanted to hide all kinds of things throughout the 8 days of Passover, hah!

I also succeeded at making matzoh brei, and the boys actually ate it, which was a nice surprise. Adam took to calling it “hot matzoh” and that’s probably the name in our house now.

The week of Passover also happened to be when some colleagues were in town, and we took the opportunity to go out for a group activity. Since our team is geographically distributed, it’s a rare occurrence for so many of us to be in one place, and there was one colleague in the group that I hadn’t met at all before! We met at a Bocce place in Livermore, and had a lovely lunch (even if my options were limited, Passover!) and then all attempted to figure out how to play Bocce, which was a lot of fun.

The end of April also meant MJ and I had our 11th wedding anniversary. Given everything that had been going on in the previous weeks (see above), we almost missed it, and had no opportunity to plan anything on the day itself. Instead, we booked at Thursday evening reservation just around the block at Tancho, featuring a Chef’s Counter Omakase experience. It was spectacular, and surprising for our little town! And while it was an expensive meal, they weren’t overly pretentious and the experience was a beautiful way to celebrate our anniversary.

Plus, by doing some thing early and local, it got us home in time to help their babysitter put the kids to bed. This was particularly important because we had just recently started our second attempt to put the boys in the same room. Honestly the change in room situation almost made us skip observing our anniversary at all, but we didn’t want to keep delaying taking time as a couple. It’s so important for us to stay connected, especially during the difficult and busy times.

Having worked through the weekend, taking a couple days off the following week was the most logical thing to do over all, but it really worked out this time. First, it was a huge help in preparing to fly to Philadelphia on Saturday morning. I can squeeze in all our prep on a couple of late nights, but having the daytime to do it was especially beneficial, no late nights for me!

I also finally found someone to help me with chores and organization projects around the house three times a week. We have a house cleaner come by every two weeks, which is a huge help, but working full time, caring for the kids in the evening, and doing all the daily chores meant I had very little other time in my week for either personal time or other projects we want to tackle. I know that a lot of folks live like this, and have much more physically demanding jobs, but it’s not the life I want for myself. Since we have the means to hire someone to help for a few hours a week, I was finally able to convince myself that it’s the right thing to do for our family right now.

My new helper came by on Tuesday to meet and make sure we were a good fit (both sides, personality and task-wise) and then I had her come by for a couple hours on Thursday and Friday. It was especially nice to have someone help me prep everything for the trip, that took a full two hours of chores off my list (or, more realistically, took and hour off and allowed me to finally have the stroller cleaned, which I always say I’ll do but never get around to).

The other thing of note last week was that Purim was coming up, and I wanted to make Hamantaschen with the boys. This is my third year doing it, and this year we had the added pressure of promising Adam’s teacher that we’d bring some by on Friday before we left to share with his class as a culture sharing activity. On Thursday morning after dropping Adam off at school, Aaron and I got to work on the dough, which needed to chill in the refrigerator for three hours.

After lunch, we got to work on the cookies! This year we went with two flavors, MJ picked up some cherry pie filling to try out, and I also thawed some of our home made plum jam. They both came out beautifully, this was definitely my best year yet. On Friday we brought several to Adam’s class, and then we were able to pack the rest of the ones we didn’t eat for our trip to Philadelphia (and actual Purim, which was on Sunday).

Speaking of plums, we also spent some time last week doing a bit of yard work. The plum tree really needed some pruning, and so did the apple tree. So I watched a YouTube video about pruning fruit trees and went to work chopping. I wanted to make sure I did enough so the trees aren’t weighed down (last year a branch on the plum tree snapped), but I also want to make sure I don’t inflict so much trauma on the tree that it fails to produce fruit for a couple years, the boys love those fruit trees! I won’t know for a couple months whether I succeeded, but they do look a lot better now. Plus, the boys were actually a big help, they helped haul the branches into the compost, and were hilarious little helpers as I also spent a bit of time pulling up weeds in the back yard.

Saturday we flew to Philadelphia, on a flight that was delayed by over 5 hours. Unfortunately the delay didn’t hit until just before boarding, so we were stuck at the airport for all that time trying to keep a three year old and a five year old entertained without relying too much on screens, which we’d have to do in the air. We began our adventure playing by the gate a bit, hoping for a quick departure, but as soon as it was clear that wasn’t possible, we made our way to a restaurant for a snack and change of scenery.

After some time there, it was off to another restaurant where the boys could get ice cream. The remaining time was spent at an airport lounge, which also wasn’t terribly exciting for them, but breaking up the 5 hour wait with multiple locations did help stave off a lot of the boredom. Honestly, the boys really handled themselves well, all things considered. The arrival into Newark was another challenge, it was 2AM by the time we got in, limited ground staff meant they sent the stroller to baggage claim rather than having it at the gate, so we had to encourage two sleepy kiddos all the way to baggage claim. Then the air train wasn’t running, so we had to rework our whole plan to pick up the rental car. And suffice to say, we didn’t plan on getting to the townhouse nearly 5AM. As a result, Sunday was a little rough.

We’re now in Philadelphia for a couple weeks. We have some plans to meet up with some folks, and I will be heading up to the Poughkeepsie office for an IBM System 360 celebration next week. I’m rounding out the trip by speaking at the Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC) on Saturday, April 6th. It’s nice to be here again.