We spent the last couple weeks of 2023 and the first week of 2024 at the townhouse in Philadelphia. We had just been there for Thanksgiving, so it kind of felt like resuming the rest of a trip, since some of the food in the refrigerator was still good, and we didn’t bother having anyone take out the trash or anything between visits. We flew in on a Saturday, and so had the weekend to settle in before work on Monday. I took four days off between Christmas and New Years, which was a nice opportunity to get out of the house on some adventures, and allowed me a bit of time to do some things around the house. We also had a lot of nice, chill visits with family, that didn’t seem rushed or forced since we weren’t just squeezing things in before we left again. It gave me a taste of what it must be like to live near family full time, and it me a little sad. While there are tremendous benefits, one of the things we sacrifice by having chosen to build our life here in California is that daily closeness with family.

The first full week we were in town was nice for settling in. Our little California boys were clamoring to go outside, and one morning it was barely warm enough for me to take them out to a nearby playground. While playing, I noticed that there was a library nearby, so after they got done playing outside we made our way over to the library. It just happened to be at the same time as an open play with a bunch of other little kids at the library, so while Adam helped me get a library card, Aaron went with our au pair over to play with the other kids. Then Adam and I explored the rest of the library. It was at that visit that we learned that they do regular events for kids and one of the upcoming ones was a magician, which we went to on a rainy day later in the trip and Aaron really seemed to enjoy.

That week we also had our friends Danita and David over to visit and then went out with them to dinner. They’re moving away soon, so it was one of our last opportunities to catch up before their departure, and I was keen on learning more about the progress of their move. Plus, Aaron wanted to see them because Danita brought along her little dog Blackie the last time we saw them, and this time she did again! He’s slowly warming up to dogs, and meeting a little friendly one helps a lot.

We have a tradition of celebrating winter birthdays when we’re in Philly over the winter holidays. It gives us the opportunity to celebrate Aaron’s birthday at home in California before the trip, Adam’s after, and celebrate with family in Philadelphia in between – plus a few birthdays for adults that occur then! Unfortunately, winter also means cold season, so this year it fizzled out a bit. We enjoyed the company of my father-in-law and his wife, which was nice, but others couldn’t make it for cake and presents, and we had to meet up with them later in the trip.

This trip was colder than the one in November, and it was a longer trip, so I think the boys felt a little cooped up. But we tried to do a lot of meals out, and we had little at-home highlights like fire trucks driving by on December 24th for Christmas Eve, and family members dropping by later in the trip once everyone was over their colds (as much as kids ever get over colds, hah!).

We also had some adventures on the long weekends. Little Aaron has been really fascinated with dinosaurs lately, so once I told him that he could see real dinosaur fossils in museums he’s been fixated on seeing “a dinosaur museum.” I was disappointed to learn that the options were slim in the bay area. Instead, we decided to visit The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University in Philly! Our original plan had been to take the train down since the boys had also been clamoring for a train ride, but sparse weekend schedules and a cold, rainy forecast put a damper on those plans and we ended up driving down and were fortunate to find very close metered street parking.

I’d only been to the museum once before, back in 2008, and I noted at the time that it was small, but also blessedly not crowded like a lot of the major dinosaur halls are. Unfortunately Aaron was immediately scared, and clung tightly to MJ through our whole dinosaur hall visit. I guess he didn’t manage to extrapolate from what he’d seen on TV just how big dinosaurs are, so you walk in to see a giant T-Rex with it’s 6 inch sharp teeth and I can see how that would be a little startling to a three year old. Adam had a delightful time in the dinosaur hall though, asking a lot of questions before making a bee line to the elevators, because he likes elevators.

The Big Dig exhibit was a hit with both of them though, kids are equipped with a large paintbrush and get to climb on and sweep their way through “fossils” covered in cork bits over a long span of play area. It was adorable and I’m grateful that they got some real playtime in. Upstairs, the Outside In exhibit also gave them an opportunity for some play, and crafting, which always keeps Adam quite enthralled, even if the activity seemed to be winding down when we arrived.

It wasn’t all family stuff though, one evening MJ and I managed to sneak out for a date night at The Continental Mid-town. It’s one of our favorite restaurants in the city, and it had been several months since MJ and I had gotten and evening out alone together. Given various factors, it’s difficult for us to do regularly, and instead we opt for opportunistic lunches together when we can carve out time. I discovered just how rare it was when I dressed up and came downstairs to an incredulous Adam asking, “Mom, WHY are you dressed like that?!”

It was a wonderful evening. I had the best company, our favorite foods were still on the menu, and we got to try several interesting cocktails. The rain picked up while we were eating, so we had a soggy walk/run back to the car, but I’d say that was the only thing putting a damper on the evening, and even that was a little fun.

During the four days I took off between Christmas and New Years, I spent one day catching up with my friend Stephen who also happened to be in town Pennsylvania visiting family. But before talking about that, I’ll pause to share that it’s unusual for me to take off this week. My family is Jewish and even prior to that my observance of Christmas was purely secular and rather solitary, so I’d often work this week, and even offer to be on-call on Christmas itself so my colleagues who celebrated the holiday could do so with family, in peace. Thanksgiving was always my family holiday! This has changed now that we’re bound to a school district calendar. Most people in the US celebrate Christmas, so the “winter” holiday naturally lands there, and it makes more sense for me to take off when everyone is at home, and in our case, cooped up at the townhouse in Philly in winter. Some of my week was spent catching up on chores, some was spent enjoying leisurely meals, a library visit, and playtime with the boys, and Thursday I spent the afternoon with a friend.

Our plan was to meet up and wander around the lovely town of New Hope, home to lots of delightful boutique shops and dining opportunities. But it rained. Thankfully there are a couple things that you can do when it’s raining, like enjoy a ride on New Hope Railroad! Purely a tourist and train enthusiast experience, the standard railway trip take you on a 45 minute ride through the woods of eastern Pennsylvania, so we were able to snag a couple first class tickets and enjoy some wine on our little journey while catching up, and listening to periodic tales about the historic railroad line and the area. We also enjoyed lunch (and beers!) right across the tracks at Triumph Brewing. It was fun to catch up, and I always enjoy a good train ride. Just don’t tell my kids I went on a train without them.

The next day was Friday and MJ had off from work, so we met up with our friends Mike and Jess and their two boys who are a little older than Adam and Aaron for a trip to Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ. I hadn’t seen them since before the pandemic! Like so many people, they’d never met Aaron! And their own boys have grown so much since I last saw them. So I wanted to make sure we finally made time to get together, and Aaron’s love for fish made an aquarium an obvious choice. Unfortunately I planned poorly, and upon arrival discovered that they only had tickets for 90 minutes in the future, oops! I snagged the tickets and we found a nearby sandwich shop to sit down together and have lunch before our aquarium visit. Even then, we had a little time to kill, so the boys got to enjoy the waterfront and nice views of the Philadelphia skyline.

Since there were timed tickets, it should have been obvious that they were at capacity and it would be crowded, but it didn’t quite prepare me for how crowded it would be – wow! It was PACKED! I’m sure it being a holiday week with kids off from school contributed to this too. Fortunately, things actually went really well. All four boys were generally in good moods and listened, and we had some really nice moments. Adam got to pet a ray and take a bunch of pictures, and Aaron got to enjoy seeing lots of swimming critters and I think he enjoyed having other kids to hang out with.

The final partial week we were in Philly was pretty chill. We didn’t have plans for New Years Eve, so as soon as the fireworks wound down we went to bed. We were then back to work Tuesday through Thursday, but made time to meet up with family a bunch more in the evenings and a enjoyed lovely child-free lunch with my sister in law. I finally had my beloved buffalo chicken cheesesteak (I can get decent chicken cheesesteaks in California, but not buffalo chicken). Our flight home was blessedly uneventful, and the boys are definitely getting better about traveling, and we’re getting more streamlined in our approach to traveling with kids. It was a good trip.

We spent the week before Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving week itself at our townhouse in Philadelphia. Since this is just another home spot for us, we were both working most of the time, and the usual laundry, dishes, and house stuff. A few days into our trip, the dishwasher stopped working, but thankfully it had just come unplugged, and we were able to pull it out and swiftly solve the problem. There was also a drawer in the kitchen that and been badly installed and broke on our last family trip there, and we spent some time fixing that as well.

The last big thing to “fix” was taking down the play pen that MJ built all the way back in 2019. It took up nearly half the living room, but the pandemic rendered most of it’s useful life irrelevant. I’m not sure it was age-appropriate for even Aaron when we visited for the first time in 2022, but they had both definitely outgrown it now. It’s disappointing that we got so little use out of it, but we couldn’t have anticipated that a global pandemic would keep us away for over two and a half years.

Work-wise, it’s the time of year where we’re all putting a lot of work into finishing major milestones in our projects and looking forward to the next year, but I was able to squeeze in some time to present at a Philadelphia area Linux Users Group (PLUG) meeting. I hadn’t been to an in-person meeting since before the pandemic, indeed, they’ve only started resuming them a few months ago. It felt like a wonderful opportunity to see some old friends and meet some of the new folks that have since joined the group, or would come out of the woodwork for a talk about open source on the mainframe. Nearly 20 people attended, and I was able to put together some fun, historical Renaissance-themed slides with my topic, “The Open Source Renaissance in Mainframe Technology” (slides here). Since I had some familiarity with the group, I was able to shift into a very casual mode for the presentation, which lasted longer than the hour I had allotted. Following the meeting, several of us went to a nearby restaurant to continue discussions, including my close friends Danita and David who I was delighted to see had come to the meeting.

I took off from work on the first Friday we were in town since we had shuffled up our au pair’s schedule a bit for travel and she was entitled to a three-day weekend. It worked out well, since the day was unseasonably warm and gave me to opportunity to take the boys out to the Philadelphia Zoo! I drove them down in the morning so we’d have a chance at making it back for lunch and Aaron’s nap – which we did! We only shift the schedule by one hour while we’re in Philly, so that helps with a lot of things that open later and we usually can’t squeeze in before nap time. Aaron got out of the stroller as soon as we entered the zoo and got to exploring. For half the visit, Adam was in the stroller, glued to the map and hoping for a zoo train that I was 90% sure wasn’t running. Once he accepted that it wasn’t running, I was able to coax him out by suggesting that he could take pictures of animals with his phone. It worked like a charm! He delightfully spent the rest of the visit taking pictures, while Aaron and I enjoyed the animals and found things to climb on.

That night, Danita and David came by to visit and have dinner. Danita brought her tiny dog Blackie, to give the boys an opportunity to visit with a dog in a safe, controlled environment. They haven’t really been exposed much to dogs and tend to be a little fearful of them, so it was a nice experiment. By the end of the evening Aaron was giving him treats without hesitation, and after they left he told us, “I want a dog, that dog.” Later in the trip when we drove past the steakhouse we had dinner at, he mentioned the dog again. He left quite the impression! Before dinner, we also got to use MJ’s old telescope a little. I had brought it out for the boys a few nights before, but my own inexperience shone through and I couldn’t get it adjusted right to see anything. David had a go at it and got us pointed at the moon, unfortunately it’s missing some pieces and won’t stay in place, so every time the boys barreled toward it, it got knocked away from the moon again. I’ll have to see about getting more familiar with it myself and see what I need to do to fix it up.

I already wrote about the type-in we went to on Saturday. On Sunday we drove out to New Jersey to meet up with MJ’s cousins Phyllis and Jack. It was their first time getting to meet littler Aaron! We met them at their apartment and visited for a while, while Aaron got to feed his second dog of the trip. We had dinner at a nearby diner that we quite like and has some pretty delicious desserts. A dinner social visit was also made to a couple of MJ’s friends from back in his school days who I hadn’t seen in over a year.

For this trip we decided that we should host Thanksgiving for the extended family at our place for the first time. This made us finally buy a proper dining room table, since we’d long since outgrown the 4-person Ikea folding table that I bought for my apartment in Pottstown years ago. I knew I wanted to get one and we’d discussed furniture shopping, but it wasn’t until I had a few minutes before an appointment to get the car serviced and a popped into a furniture shop that we made a decision. The table was delivered on the Monday before Thanksgiving.

On Tuesday evening my mother, sister Annette, and nephew Xavier drove down from Maine to visit. Annette and Xavier came down for the winter holidays last year, but my mother had never met Aaron before, and the last time she saw Adam he was only a baby! Unfortunately, it was raining and they had to contend with holiday traffic, so the drive down the east coast ended up being longer than it should have been, but they made it and we had a pizza delivery timed for their arrival so they quickly got nourishment as well.

On Wednesday I took the day off from work to spend the time with my family. We enjoyed lunch at a Jewish deli where we were picking up some brisket and gravy, stuffing, green beans, pumpkin pie, and a loaf of challah. It was a pretty chill day though, I went to the mall with my sister and Adam, and then we all went out to dinner at Toscana 52, our favorite local Italian place.

On Thanksgiving we picked up the rest of our catered Thanksgiving meal from a nearby diner, so we could complete our meal with turkey, mashed potatoes, macaroni & cheese, corn, and dinner rolls. We also totally rearranged the living room to make room for a couple 6′ tables we rented. We pondered buying a couple folding tables, but chairs were the real problem, so MJ looked into rental options and came upon Karley’s Rentals which worked out beautifully. Their prices were quite reasonable, their facility was clean, and their staff was incredibly friendly, helpful, and efficient. MJ and I drove down to the northeast to pick them up, and then drop them off again on Friday morning, which ended up being better than waiting for uncertain delivery/pick-up times. Bonus, everything fit in our SUV with a single trip!

Around 4PM folks started to arrive and I began heating up all the food. In addition to my family, MJ’s father and his partner, and her adult children with their own children who we’ve grown close to. It was a loud, chaotic Thanksgiving with all the kids, but isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? I also discovered that I love hosting. It should come as no surprise, it’s the kind of defined role with tasks to keep me busy and kept me away from awkward social interactions that arise when I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing (yes, even with family!). I didn’t even mind all the setup and cleanup, I like staying busy.

We had so much food. It’s what you want from Thanksgiving, but we were flying home just a day after Thanksgiving, so it wasn’t optimal to be left with a ton of leftovers. We ate some of it, and made sandwiches for the plane, but barely put a dent in what was left. Thankfully our family has keys and promised to clear out the refrigerator after we left to make sure as little as possible went to waste.

Friday was our last full day in town, and with my family, so we decided to spend the afternoon down at The Franklin Institute. After returning aforementioned tables and chairs, we loaded the boys in the car and my mother, sister, and nephew followed us in their car and made our way to the parking garage. We skipped the stroller, which was quite the gamble! But I had a feeling the boys could handle it. Still, the whole outing was kind of a gamble. We hadn’t really taken the boys to a place like that before, and with crowds and noise and unfamiliar settings, I’m never quite sure how things will go. Thankfully, it was great. Our first stop was the giant heart.

We were there for HOURS. They happily ate at the museum cafe, engaged with loads of exhibits, and didn’t show any signs of tiring until they both fell asleep in the car on the drive home. It was the first time I’d ever gone with kids, so I saw the whole place through a totally new lens. It’s also different than how MJ experienced it, because he grew up with this museum, he WAS a kid there at one point! I only ever saw it as an adult, with other adults. It was absolutely delightful to explain so much science stuff to the boys, even if they can’t quite appreciate it yet. And I loved seeing them have so much fun with their cousin, who was happily helping Adam through the neuro network “Neuro climb” and so much more. They’d enjoyed playing with Xavier the whole visit, but my hope is that this science museum trip is one that he could honestly enjoy too.

Saturday was spent packing and closing up the house, and it was a stressful one for me. I don’t know how it takes us so many hours to do this, but there always seems to be a huge list of things to do on our last day, even when we’ll be back in a few weeks. But we were ready when our ride for the airport arrived at 3:30PM. We didn’t get back home in California until 1AM Pacific, which we may have to re-think in future visits. The boys suffered from quite the sleep disruption that lasted several days due to that late flight. At the very least, we’ll have to see about making sure they eat enough in-transit so we’re also not trying to feed them dinner before we tuck them in to bed at 2AM.

We weren’t sure we’d do this trip at all due to how much it takes out of us to make the trip, and knowing we’d be back again for three weeks at the end of the year, but I’m so glad we did. Timing worked out for so many visits with friends and family that would have been impossible over the winter holidays, and it decreases the stress we’ll have on that second visit about getting all our social visits squeezed in. It was a wonderful trip.