First up was a trip down to Ardenwood Historic Farm. I’ve been wanting to go for a long time because they have a vintage train there you can ride, but what brought us down this time was their annual sheep shearing event. I wasn’t sure how the boys would feel about it, but they definitely had an interest. Aside from some timing issues and a much more crowded event than I expected, it was a good time. We got to wander around the farm and see lots of old farming equipment and animals, and then made our way over to the sheep shearing area where Aaron got to pet some sheep.

If we go again, it seems like going after noon is best for avoiding the crowds. And the train has been put away for maintenance, so hopefully next time we’ll have an opportunity to ride on that too.

Last weekend we made our way over to a book sale by our local library book organization and plant sale put on by our local garden club. The book sale is always a hit, though I didn’t come out with as many treasures as I had hoped. The plant sale was a lot of fun though. We aren’t the best at keeping plants alive, but the boys love gardening, so I’ve been setting plant watering reminders and trying to come up with strategies to be more thoughtful about plant care. We’ll see how it goes, we picked up five plants: rainbow cherry tomato, raspberry, Celosia Flamingo Feather, spider plant, and a geranium. I think most of them will do OK, but I am worried about the fragile little tomato plant.

We observed Passover recently with a Seder at home. It’s been an interesting time marker and opportunity to see how much the boys have matured, as we’ve never really managed to make our way through the Haggadah since we had kids. Last year Adam loved the search for the afikomen, but ignored most other things. This time I wouldn’t say they were fully engaged, but they did go through several of the seder activities with us and mostly stayed at the table during a seder that hit the important points. I’m really proud of them, and glad we can share this with them now. They still didn’t enjoy the brisket meal, but Aaron seems to love matzoh ball soup, even if he hasn’t quite figured out eating soup without wearing a good amount of it.

This spring has brought a several days of gloomy weather as well as new found sunshine and warmth. On one gloomy evening, we already had plans to take the boys to see their first movie in a theater. A Minecraft Movie was playing at our local one-screen, historic theater, and the elementary school booked a showing, and we figured it was a good opportunity in case the boys weren’t as quiet or settled as is appropriate for that setting. It was wild. Before it began there were kids literally climbing the walks, hopping on the stage, running around, and even during the movie it wasn’t exactly quiet in there. Aaron did talk a little during the movie to ask questions, but overall I was really happy with how it went. The movie was fun for all of us too.

Another rainy weekend was spent changing light bulbs. It wasn’t planned like that exactly, we had a few things on our house list and light bulbs were an afterthought, but when we discovered that the recessed lighting were canned lights, it basically derailed everything. What’s a canned light? You have to replace the whole thing? The ones we had are nearly 20 years old and not made anymore?! Thankfully, the holes in the ceiling are standard size for canned lights, so it wasn’t hard to order a half dozen and do a big replacement project the next day. We also scoured the house for a bunch of others to replace, including the one in the bathroom the kids use. In that one, I also took down the entire lovely, art deco glass feature and cleaned it, which I’ve never done (we’ve lived here for 7 years, hah!). In the end, our house has much better lighting and Adam told us he never wants to change light bulbs again. I guess it wasn’t exactly an exciting weekend for him.

In between all this, April brought two vague illnesses through the house during which the boys had mild fevers and sore throats. I’m grateful that no one else got sick, but it did cause some missed school and swim classes, which is always a bummer. The recovery isn’t fun for anyone either, since they both want to go on grand adventures, but I know they need rest to recover, even if they refuse to accept that. This weekend is more of the same, probably no light bulbs this time but we do have some projects on our list and a kid recovering from the latest ailment.

We got in on a Friday night, and the next day the Churchville Nature Center happened to be having a day of activities for members. It was a nice, local thing to do with all of us feeling a bit tired. They had animal caretakers out with some of their snakes, reptiles, and turtles, and several activities for the kids to engage with. The boys got to touch a turtle shell and a snake skin, and they both were quite fond of the bearded dragon.

Over the week we lucked out with great weather, so the boys spent a lot of time outside with their au pair, but also enjoyed indoor activities and toys they hadn’t played with in a few months. I’m glad they were occupied, as I was in the midst of a very busy time at work with a major product launch on the horizon and two major projects I’m working on barreling in on their concluding phases. I wish I could have spent more time with family, but I was simply inundated. MJ had his best friend come into town, and even her I didn’t see much as I was sequestered in my office, and then working a couple late evenings while she spent time with MJ.

The next weekend we were fortunate enough to be in town for cousin Sammy’s birthday. Amusingly, it was at another nature center, so the boys definitely got their fill of local critters on this trip! Aaron got to pet a snake, hold a friendly cockroach, and feed a tortoise. Everyone got to enjoy beautiful cake made by Aunt Yilia.

Throughout our stay it was nice to have their grandfather stop by a few times to play with the boys, and go out with Irina and Sammy a couple times. One day we went to the library, where I worked from for a couple hours. Libraries continue to be a reading lifeline for me, as I was able to continue reading a large book I started on the west coast without having to haul it across the country, a quick search showed which nearby branch I could pick it up at without even having to do a transfer. And yes, I realize ebooks exist, I have a Nook and a Kindle! But it’s not my preferred experience.

On our last full weekend there I was clued into the Himalayan blue poppy blooming at Longwood Gardens, and we decided to make a day of it. Our kids love gardens and flowers, and I’m a big fan of the sprawling Longwood Gardens, having formed many pleasant memories there. It was about an hour long drive, but Adam and I hunted for colorful cars to complete a rainbow and Aaron took an unapproved nap. Disappointingly, it was too early in the season for any of the fountains to be on, but we did get to enjoy the tree houses and all the springtime blooms starting to come up.

And then there were the blue poppies. I’m not actually one to chase flowers, but these ones are breathtaking and difficult to grow, so I was really happy to get to see them.

It was my first time being in the area for children, because the last time we were at Longwood Gardens was nearly 7 years prior, when I was pregnant with Adam! They also redid the bonsai tree area since I last went there, so that was nice to visit. It was a tiring day for everyone with a lot of walking, but I think we all enjoyed it.

MJ and I got out on a rare date night while we were in town. The final Tuesday we drove down to Philadelphia to eat at Buddakan, one of our favorites. I made my way through a sake sampler and a cocktail as we enjoyed various dim sum dishes and a small steak. I’m glad we went and we enjoyed it, but I think when we visit over the summer we’re going to expand our options some beyond just our usual places. Surely some new, exciting places have opened that we have yet to experience!

On this trip I also discovered that my favorite bagel place in the world has a location just 20 minutes from our townhouse! Yum Yum Bake Shops was my go-to when I worked in Lansdale and wanted to ruin all the work I’d just done at the gym. Their bagels are chewy and perfect, and I haven’t managed to find that level of perfection since, especially not on the west coast. So, one morning I braved traffic down Street Road and made the pilgrimage. I also got a giant donut for the boys because I accurately predicted that they’d get a kick out of it.

Finally, this trip was notable because we had a new car. Well, a minivan. I’ll write about it soon, but we purchased it right before we left and then had it shipped across the country, since it needs to be registered in California (long story). This meant that for this trip, and over the summer, we’ll have two cars! It’s quite the indulgence, but it was good to have overlap. The Acura MDX has been a great car there, but with it hitting the 8th model year it’s going to need a California smog check unless we can get an exemption, and we can’t get that done in Pennsylvania. Two cars did mean that I had to spend some time cleaning out the garage, and then we had to squeeze both cars into the garage upon our departure. But they did fit! Even if it was very tight.

We took a Saturday afternoon flight home at the conclusion of our two weeks. It was a solid trip, and I’m grateful that we finally made it a visit without anyone getting sick or any other major calamities. It’s also starting to get a bit easier to travel with the boys, partially due to them getting unlimited screen time on flights and them actually starting to really love that perk. With each trip they’re also doing a better job of carrying their own backpacks and suitcases through the airport, which is a load off from us. Plus, diaper-free travel is a game-changer! I never want to change a diaper in a busy airport restroom again.

I left off about a year ago when I succeeded in getting an older version of Debian on it, but attempts to get the tooling to install a more broadly supported version of U-Boot to the SPI flash were unsuccessful. Then I got pulled away to other things, effectively just bringing my VF2 around to events as a prop for my multiarch talks – which it did beautifully! I even had one conference attendee buy one to play with while sitting in the audience of my talk. Cool.

I was delighted to learn how much progress had been made since I last looked. Canonical has published more formalized documentation: Install Ubuntu on the StarFive VisionFive 2 in the place of what had been a rather cluttered wiki page. So I got all hooked up and began my latest attempt.

My first step was to grab the pre-installed server image. I got that installed, but struggled a little with persistence once I unplugged the USB UART adapter and rebooted. I then decided just to move forward with the Install U-Boot to the SPI flash instructions. I struggled a bit here for two reasons:

1. The documentation today leads off with having you download the livecd, but you actually want the pre-installed server image to flash U-Boot, the livecd step doesn’t come until later. Admittedly, the instructions do say this, but I wasn’t reading carefully enough and was more focused on the steps.
2. I couldn’t get the 24.10 pre-installed image to work for flashing U-Boot, but once I went back to the 24.04 pre-installed image it worked.

And then I had to fly across the country. We’re spending a couple weeks around spring break here at our vacation house in Philadelphia, but the good thing about SBCs is that they’re incredibly portable and I just tossed my gear into my backpack and brought it along.

Thanks to Emil Renner Berthing (esmil) on the Ubuntu Matrix server for providing me with enough guidance to figure out where I had gone wrong above, and got me on my way just a few days after we arrived in Philly.

With the newer U-Boot installed, I was able to use the Ubuntu 24.04 livecd image on a micro SD Card to install Ubuntu 24.04 on an NVMe drive! That’s another new change since I last looked at installation, using my little NVMe drive as a target was a lot simpler than it would have been a year ago. In fact, it was rather anticlimactic, hah!

And with that, I was fully logged in to my new system.

elizabeth@r2kt:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
hart : 2
isa : rv64imafdc_zicntr_zicsr_zifencei_zihpm_zba_zbb
mmu : sv39
uarch : sifive,u74-mc
mvendorid : 0x489
marchid : 0x8000000000000007
mimpid : 0x4210427
hart isa : rv64imafdc_zicntr_zicsr_zifencei_zihpm_zba_zbb

It has 4 cores, so here’s the full output: vf2-cpus.txt

What will I do with this little single board computer? I don’t know yet. I joked with my husband that I’d “install Debian on it and forget about it like everything else” but I really would like to get past that. I have my little multiarch demo CI project in the wings, and I’ll probably loop it into that.

Since we were in Philly, I had a look over at my long-neglected Raspberry Pi 1B that I have here. When we first moved in, I used it as an ssh tunnel to get to this network from California. It was great for that! But now we have a more sophisticated network setup between the houses with a VLAN that connects them, so the ssh tunnel is unnecessary. In fact, my poor Raspberry Pi fell off the WiFi network when we switched to 802.1X just over a year ago and I never got around to getting it back on the network. I connected it to a keyboard and monitor and started some investigation. Honestly, I’m surprised the little guy was still running, but it’s doing fine!

And it had been chugging along running Rasbian based on Debian 9. Well, that’s worth an upgrade. But not just an upgrade, I didn’t want to stress the device and SD card, so I figured flashing it with the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS was the right way to go. It turns out, it’s been a long time since I’ve done a Raspberry Pi install.

I grabbed the Raspberry Pi Imager and went on my way. It’s really nice. I went with the Raspberry Pi OS Lite install since it’s the RP1, I didn’t want a GUI. The imager asked the usual installation questions, loaded up my SSH key, and I was ready to load it up in my Pi.

The only thing I need to finish sorting out is networking. The old USB WiFi adapter I have it in doesn’t initialize until after it’s booted up, so wpa_supplicant on boot can’t negotiate with the access point. I’ll have to play around with it. And what will I use this for once I do, now that it’s not an SSH tunnel? I’m not sure yet.

I realize this blog post isn’t very deep or technical, but I guess that’s the point. We’ve come a long way in recent years in support for non-x86 architectures, so installation has gotten a lot easier across several of them. If you’re new to playing around with architectures, I’d say it’s a really good time to start. You can hit the ground running with some wins, and then play around as you go with various things you want to help get working. It’s a lot of fun, and the years I spent playing around with Debian on Sparc back in the day definitely laid the groundwork for the job I have at IBM working on mainframes. You never know where a bit of technical curiosity will get you.

1. To make me feel better about our home, rather than “argh, it’s always a mess!”
2. To make it easier for me to complete tasks, less “where is that form for school?” and “where is that 9 inch baking pan?”

And with the overarching goal of bringing back a bit of control to my life and feel less overwhelmed, which I’ve been struggling with lately.

I’m happy to say that I’ve been largely successful so far. I came up with a system for the kids so their school stuff isn’t just all over the place, and it’s easy to stay disciplined about putting away their papers and returning things on time. I also did some under counter organization, which has been incredibly useful so far, and we’ve kept it up for a few weeks!

I joked that it’s funny that I’m “so old” that under counter organization excites me, but honestly, I’ve always been like this.

In other house news, the TV in our au pair’s room died recently. MJ was feeling industrious, so he bought a set of boards for that model online and did a project with Adam to replace them. Success! I feel a little bad that my first inclination was to buy a new TV because they’re so inexpensive, but replacing the board in them was even less expensive in terms of cash, they had fun doing it, and it kept one more TV out of a landfill.

As life continues to chug along, it’s noteworthy that eggs are very expensive right now. Bird flu has decimated chicken flocks for months and no end in sight. With federal efforts that would help that come to a conclusion being dismantled by a fiercely pro-business, anti-health federal government I’m concerned it won’t get better any time soon. Our local grocery store got to $15.99 for 18 eggs before I finally decided to haul myself over to Costco one morning (before they sell out for the day) to grab two dozen for $8.99. It’s still on the expensive side (California always is) but even for here the situation was getting a bit out of hand.

I’ve continued taking Tuesday evenings for myself. In early January I went to San Francisco to see Nosferatu at the AMC Metreon. I pre-gamed by watching the original Nosferatu from 1922, and I’m very glad I did. It is the same story, but the new one has some really great nods to the original and some beautiful scene recreations. The movie was beautiful and well-acted, and I didn’t find it too gory. It also doesn’t have the cheap jump-scares that are so popular in horror now, and which I don’t like. I want my horror to be beautiful and nightmare inducing, but I don’t want to feel anxious about it while I’m sitting there watching it. This movie really hit the mark. I also saw Flow at our local theater, and finally saw Wicked! Another Tuesday evening I decided to go swimming at nearby Hayward Plunge, which has a $5 drop-in rate. That was a lot of fun, I love to swim and I’ve been looking for an outlet. Other evening activities for myself have included going to the library and reading, which satisfies my desire to have a calm evening to recharge. I have some San Francisco dinners with friends queued up after our spring break trip to Philly, which I’m looking forward to as well.

We observed Purim recently, which sadly got interrupted by Aaron having a cold that came with a side order of fever. That meant we had to avoid the event at the synagogue we’ve been hoping to go to more, but we did make Hamantashen! It was a smaller batch than previous years and we only did cherry filling, but everyone seemed happy with it and the boys had fun making it.

Since we were home for the sick kiddo weekend, we spent some time finally putting some more paintings up around the house. It’s nice seeing things come together, and finally starting to free up some space in the garage.

And then I promptly put a car in the garage. It wasn’t planned, but MJ’s 2000 Alero hasn’t been doing great lately. We had to recondition the battery recently after I neglected to take it out for a drive for a few weeks (oops). Once the battery was healthy again, I took it out for a jaunt to the car wash and grocery store, and didn’t make it past the entrance to the car wash. I put down the window to pay for the car wash, and heard a clunk. The window had fallen into the door. Unfortunately, it’s a relatively expensive fix, and with the overall condition of the car and usefulness to us, we made the sad decision that it was time to say goodbye. It’ll be a few weeks until we can actually part ways, so it’s basically taking up all the free space in the garage until then. It’s been amusingly weird having a car in the garage.

The following weekend everyone was feeling much better just in time for Monster Jam in Oakland. I’ve never had any interest in monster trucks, but Aaron really likes them and I thought it might be a fun thing to do with the boys. We weren’t sure how they’d react to how loud it was, but we came prepared with noise dampening headphones. And indeed they did have fun! I could have passed on it honestly, which is funny because so far my own interests have been quite aligned with the boys, and this was definitely a departure. It was nice to be able to take BART there though and not have to worry about parking.

Tomorrow we’re off to Philadelphia for spring break. Our house sitter gets to try her hand at keeping our new house tree alive while we’re gone, but I think she’s up to the task. In fact, given my track record with house plants, it may even be healthier once we return.

Our big house thing was replacement of the garage door opener. It broke just before we left for Philadelphia for the summer, and then MJ had his shoulder injury shortly upon our return. This month he was finally feeling better enough to tackle it! It took several weekends, and there are a few final things to complete, but the door now works beautifully, and Adam really enjoyed helping us fix it.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with the old one, which includes a very long track that’s far too big to be put in our trash can. I’m not sure it’ll fit in the car either.

MJ and I went out for Valentine’s Day, on one of the rare weeks when no one was sick lately. We ended up on a very slow BART train that got us into San Francisco a little late for our reservation at The Cavalier, but fortunately it was raining so we didn’t have much competition for tables. The unfortunate part about the rain is we didn’t fully prepare for it, so when the sky opened up during our walk from the station to the restaurant, we both got rather drenched. My coat helped me a lot, MJ’s didn’t.

Sogginess aside, the food was excellent. It had been years since I’ve had caviar, and the scallops I got were delicious. The company was top-notch too, and we mostly avoided talking about the kids. It was a lovely evening.

Last week Adam was off from school, so I took a half day on Friday and we all went out to the Meta campus for a tour. The boys were very excited to finally see where dad works, and it’s a really beautiful campus, complete with outdoor activities, lots of good food, and a tram that takes you to the other campus that features a stunning garden on the roof. The boys also enjoyed the gift shop, and so did I!

In keeping with our chill weekends, we ran errands, went to hardware stores, and one day while the boys were getting tired of Dad’s visits to the hardware stores, I took them to a nearby mall where I picked up my Build-A-Bear Mothman. I kept missing the releases, so they sold out at least twice before I finally got one. I picked it up at the store unstuffed so the boys could help me with it, which they had a lot of fun with. The only problem now is that Aaron fell in love with Mothman and has been sleeping with it every night every since, hah! He has even gone as far as getting mad when I say that it’s actually mine, and will likely now go to his grave saying it’s his. That’s OK though, our house has enough stuffies for everyone to do a bit of sharing.

Last weekend we also did some bike riding in the BART parking lot. Ever since learning how to ride his bike, Adam has been asking to actually go somewhere on his bike, instead of just riding up and down our cul-de-sac. I finally granted his request by taking them to the farmer’s market, and on our way back we went over to the mostly empty permit parking area and spent about 20 minutes just riding around. Aaron is still practicing without pedals, but he’s making progress! I’m hopeful that he’ll be pedaling with two wheels in the next few weeks.

Looking to March, I’m hopeful. I’ve been addressing the causes of my sluggishness, and I am hoping that some organizational improvements around the house that I’ve been working on will reduce my day to day stress as well. I’m also hoping that my household helper can return in the coming weeks, as I’ve really missed having her help with day to day tasks.

The hunt was on for an Olde English Selectric II typewriter ball!

I scoured eBay and found one, for the Selectric III. I wasn’t paying enough attention, and discovered only after it arrived in the mail that the Selectric III and Selectric I/II balls are not the same. I was pretty mopey about this because it turns out that it’s actually tricky to find the Olde English type ball for the Selectric I/II.

But how could I be sure it was the right one at a glance on a listing? Thanks to this reddit post I learned that the Selectric III balls tend to have yellow lettering, whereas the I/II balls have white. Indeed, that was the case for mine!

Upon seeing my disappointment, MJ suggested getting a whole Selectric III typewriter, which I briefly considered, but decided against, though I definitely appreciate the spousal support in my space-consuming hobby! Instead, I set up an eBay alert for Olde English Selectric to see if I could snag one.

It took a couple weeks, but I found one! It was sold as a set of five balls, some of which I already have, but for $80 I could have it delivered. Sold.

And so, it was the moment of truth! How beautiful will this type be?

So beautiful. I went with a quote from Nosferatu.

But I wasn’t done! While searching for this type ball, I discovered this paperweight: a Selectric ball in Lucite from 1961 that says “Advocate”. Well, that had to come home to me. And so it did.

Now keep me away from eBay for a while.

I’d say connecting with family was a big theme of the year though. Spending all summer in Philadelphia meant we could get comfortable with casual family visits and we deepened our closeness with our family there.

My sister and nephew spent just over a week with us in California and we had a ton of fun with them. We went swimming! We saw trains! We had adventures in San Francisco! And best of all, the cousins had some great bonding time.

In November we rescheduled our canceled July trip to Florida. We saw most of the folks who we had originally planned to see, and our itinerary ended up being better. Plus, we got to have some solid family time with just the four of us playing in the pool and beach, which was really nice.

Professionally, getting back to conferences was very important to me. I really enjoy the work I’m doing, and sharing that with the broader open source community. The following is a rundown of what I got up to conference-wise.

• January 17, 2024: ISV Knowledge Exchange Webinar: Open Source on IBM Z Today (video and slides)
• March 16, 2024: Southern California Linux Expo: Will your open source project run on a mainframe? And beyond! (slides, video)
• March 19, 2024: New to IBM Z Technical Session: From Ansible to Zowe: Opening the mainframe for a modern, scalable, inclusive and secure enterprise panel
• April 6, 2024: Central Pennsylvania Open Source Conference (CPOSC): Will your open source project run on a mainframe? Or on a smartwatch? (slides, video)
• April 13, 2024: Texas Linux Festival: Why (and how) would you run Linux on the Mainframe? (slides)
• April 17, 2024: Open Source Summit North America: How Our Mainframe-Focused Working Group Solved Our Linux Distribution Maintainer Isolation Problem (slides, video)
• October 1, 2024: IBM Z Day Academic Symposium: “Open by Design – the Critical Role of Open Source”
• October 21, 2024: Open Mainframe Project at TechXchange: “Crowdsourcing Mainframe Education” (panel)
• October 21, 2024: Open Mainframe Project at TechXchange: “Is that Available on the Mainframe? An Open Source Software Journey” (slides)
• November 9, 2024: SeaGL: Will your open source project run on a mainframe? Or on a smartwatch?” (slides)

In 2025 I want to get more control over intentional progress in all parts of my life, rather than feeling swept up by it like I’ve often felt these past few years when the boys were really young. They’re growing into independent little kiddos, and I’m so proud of them!

The boys and I then took the MUNI Metro and then a street car to get to The Exploratorium. I mention the transit methods, because the journey was half the fun for the boys. We have a membership at the museum so it was a nice opportunity to spend 90 or so minutes there just seeing a few exhibits. Still, the boys wanted to stay longer and were quite grumpy when I explained we had to go home. It’s also tricky for one parent to take both boys there, as they tend to get excited and want to try everything, and so they run off in opposite directions.

The following weekend we went over to our local library to enjoy a Lion Dance for the Lunar New Year. It’s a nice event, and thankfully quite short, so the boys get some excitement but don’t end up getting too fidgety. Afterwards we explored the library, did some themed coloring, and met a nice family who were in town visiting.

On Sunday we went over to a local park that has a few rides because Adam wanted to ride the train there. Wish granted! MJ and Adam then ran off to the playground while Aaron and I went on the carousel, which was fun, and the tea cup ride, which was not fun. Aaron likes to make himself dizzy so he spun us a bunch, and I learned long ago that the spinning tea cups rides are not for me. Fortunately, the ride wasn’t long and it was a cool day, so I could just pause and sit through the nausea once we disembarked. No more tea cups!

MJ had to go out of town for work, so the following Sunday I had the boys solo, and with my continued bronchitis recovery I didn’t want to overdo it, but also knew being cooped up indoors in the rain wouldn’t be good for any of us. So we drove over to the McDonald’s in town for lunch and that’s when we all discovered the new McDonald’s Play Place. They’re really impressive. It was a two-story indoor playground with slides and climbing areas and bouncing areas. I realize it’s kind of funny that I didn’t know this, but I am not a big McDonald’s person and I lived in the city for years, where they don’t have the Play Places. The boys spent close to an hour there, and it was a bit of a challenge to get them to leave!

From there I wanted to check out a local toy store, Brick by Brick Toys, that specializes in new and used Lego. I suspected I’d like it and that the boys would enjoy some free-building in some of their Lego bins, but I didn’t expect that I’d love it as much as I did. We spent a full 90 minutes building Lego at the giant mixed bins, each of the boys came away with their own Lego car creations, and for $25 we added them to a big ziplock bag filled with other assorted Lego, instantly doubling our free-play Lego collection in one stop. It turns out that it’s in the same shopping plaza as Harbor Freight, so I let the boys go there too and pick out some new flashlights.

The rainy weather has continued, and hasn’t done any favors for my mood, and I’m definitely struggling. I’m grateful for the support I have though, and right now most of the challenges that life is throwing at us are pretty typical things. Bills need to be paid, a kiddo suddenly needs glasses, a half dozen things going wrong during a minor home improvement project. We’re just keeping going and doing our best.

Adam, on the other hand, wanted to see a baseball game for his birthday. Unfortunately, his birthday is in January, and that’s about as far as you can get from anything baseball. How about a hockey game? Yes! We penciled one in for January and got to planning.

But first we had to go see Aaron’s cave. Both of these events landed in January, since I was in no shape to go to a cave right after my surgery in December. Our cave day began with a trip to the farmer’s market in town, then the boys and I took a bus to our favorite cafe in town where we met MJ for breakfast (why did we take a bus and MJ take the car? Because the boys love buses, of course). After breakfast we drove directly to San Francisco, and encountered the usual amount of traffic along the way which reminded us why going to the beach side of San Francisco is such a time investment these days.

There was a lot of parking at the park that houses the Sutro Baths ruins, which was a relief.

To get to the cave, you first walk down some trails and past the baths, the cave is pretty easy to spot, and it’s actually more like a tunnel. It was enough for Aaron though! They got their shoes all coated in sand and ran through the cave, and tried to jump in puddles. The cave has little openings here and there where you could see the waves crashing in, which was pretty cool. Reading about it, the cave is actually a rock quarry, and they used the rock to build the now ruined Sutro Baths.

I’m glad Aaron was satisfied, but I think the rest of us preferred the rest of our adventure, traipsing through the national park that’s there, seeing windswept trees and taking in the magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean. It’s such a beautiful place. The very California gift shop was nice too.

Afterwards, we made our way down to the Beach Chalet. MJ and I went there regularly when we lived in the city, so it was nice to be back, even if the boys were finicky about their food. After lunch, we took a little walk in the western-most part of Golden Gate park to see Queen Wilhelmina’s windmill and the gardens surrounding it.

It was a good day.

Adam’s birthday adventure was on the following weekend, a San Jose Sharks game! During his party, we made plans with his current and former au pairs, so all eight of us ended up going together.

I definitely had my apprehensions, there wasn’t a daytime game until March, so going in January meant we were taking them to a 7PM game, and their bedtime is usually 7:30. They were definitely a little tired, but Adam eventually got into the excitement of the game and really enjoyed spending time with his au pairs. I bought Aaron a Shark hand puppet to keep him entertained, and the boys kept eating my food.

I forgot how much I like SAP Center, even if it’s a driving journey to get there from the east bay (no useful trains like on the peninsula). It’s bright and clean and there are TONS of screens, so when I left my seat to grab some more food I was still able to see the game, and didn’t have to deal with the between-period crowds.

And a success for Adam’s birthday? Yep! I think hockey is nice because of how fast-based it is and even between periods they have entertainment to keep the crowds happy. We were lucky enough to attend on the evening they were observing the Lunar New Year, so we were entranced by lions and dragons, which was quite a lot of fun.

As for me, it was a bit of a stressful evening. I’m still bringing a diaper bag and snacks, and I do have to entertain them, so it’s not a lazy night at a game like it used to be, but it is starting to get a bit less stressful. The boys listen a bit more, run off less, and with careful planning I can make sure no one ends up too hungry/thirsty/bored. And it was worth it, I did still have pockets of fun, and I always enjoy having new experiences with the boys.

We got back home from Philadelphia a couple days before his birthday, and his birthday landed on a Monday, so we piled on to BART after work and went to the Stoneridge Mall to make his Lego dreams come true.

And pick up his birthday Build-a-Bear!

We even got some Lego-shaped gummies before going over to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner.

His birthday party was on the following Saturday and we had his former au pairs over to visit and do cake!

And gifts!

We did a little gift coordination too, with a big red Lego box joining our home just in time for me to pull out a box of vehicle-related free build Lego blocks. Truly, the free-build Lego sets have ended up being for both the boys, and Aaron was thrilled to start playing with them.

Happy 6th Birthday Adam!