Life is busy!

Just a quick note to say that I haven't forgotten about the blog!  Life is super busy - in a good way - and chugging along at a very fast speed.  I read an article this week saying that you have fewer than 1,000 weekends with your child before they turn 18 so we are making the most of our time together and really enjoying the fact that we have time for family fun while everyone is in town!

Sunday Funday

With the History Museum and the Library under our belts yesterday, today we headed to the Children's Museum!  We had only been there once before but Safta and Zadie got Riley a membership for Hanukkah so we checked in and are ready to make the most of our yearly pass!

You can't imagine how many things there are to do in just one museum - and we didn't even make it to the 3rd floor with the water tables!  There is building and climbing and cars and buttons and balls and arts and trains and lights and slides and noises and puppets and sand and... 

It is the perfect places to spend a rainy or cold afternoon and just like we got a ton of use out of our membership to the other museums last year, it will be nice to switch it up and learn every inch of this building.  Maybe we can switch off year by year to keep it fresh.

Even though I wanted to spend more time in the art room, Riley was on a mission to re-explore all the fun things he remembered from last time.  And boy did he have fun!  In a museum where you are encouraged to touch everything you possibly can, it is pretty much a 2-year-old heaven!

All of that and I can literally see him learning things in front of my eyes.  He was playing with a mini circuit and once I showed him to connect the red and black wires, he wanted to test them out on everything - trying to get all of the lights to light up.

He even took a pass at climbing up the "You Must Be 5 Years Old to Climb This" net.  This is about as far as he got on his own, but with a few pushes and shoves from mommy - who felt like a monkey - we made it to the top and Riley took the twirly slide on his own.

So thank you Safta and Zadie for this awesome gift!  I know we will have fun exploring the Children's Museum and we can't wait to show you around if you ever find yourself if the neighborhood!

Where in the world is our family?

With the whole family being in all four corners of the globe, Riley and I are finding things to do on our own to keep us busy until the troops return home.  We went to the library and what did we find but a giant globe!  We took a few minutes to point out where every single member of the family is and now Riley has a better idea.  On the way out, he even said "Daddy is on a long plane (ride)" which is kind of what I tell him every morning when he asks where he is.  We pointed out Israel, South America, Alabama, California and New York.

From there, we made our way over to the history museum - making sure to use up the last few months of our membership before our hanukkah gift from last year expires.  With the appropriate dinosaur shirt on proud display, we suited up, took to the dirt and brushed the teeth of the dinosaur bones that we found in the pit.  By now, Riley is a museum pro and knows exactly where he wants to spend his time, where the buttons are that he is allowed to push and which elevator he likes to ride.

On the way out to the car, we took our time enjoying the "warm" weather and the sunshine - both a true pleasure to experience on the last week of the year!

Happy Hanukkah!

Happy Hanukkah from the Herman family!  We have had quite a busy week celebrating.  We started with an early celebration at BiBi and Zee's before they went out of town and have been celebrating every day since!

Turns out, our Hanukkah miracle in the new house is that we keep finding places to put all of the new toys that keep accumulating throughout the eight nights!  And although there is absolutely nothing that Riley needs, that hasn't kept you - our amazing family members - from spoiling him rotten!

With the first half of the holiday already bringing Riley a guitar, a mini laptop, train tracks, a puzzle, a movie, a fork and spoon set, a soccer ball, I am a little nervous to see what the second half of the holiday comes with.  But as you can tell, he is loving every minute of it - so thank you all!

Cruising the Caribbean

Tell me this doesn't look like the face of a kid who is truly enjoying the new cruising lifestyle! Fresh off the boat from Riley's first cruise on Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas, we have a whole slew of awesome memories and pictures that will be shared when Riley is old enough to actually remember.

We had an awesome week of warm weather, fantastic destinations and fabulous family time that was made possible because we are part of the best family ever!  With stops in St. Maarten, St. Kitts, San Juan and Labadee, we had plenty of fun in the sun, warm sand between our toes and delicious meals. 

Don't get me wrong - there are definitely some challenges when cruising with a 2-year old, but with so many hands on deck, we were all able to enjoy ourselves to the fullest extent.  Thank goodness for a play room, movies on the big screen, all you can eat ice cream and pizza and a family who is willing to step in.

And with a few extra days to relax in Ft. Lauderdale after the cruise, we soaked in the last warmth of the season and prepared to come back home and brave the winter months.

This is a family vacation that I know we were all looking forward to and one that we will remember for the rest of our lives.  It was a long time coming but I am so glad that we were all able to carve time out of our schedules to spend Thanksgiving together.

And now that we are all back home, it's time to unpack, relax and look forward to the next family vacation (which will hopefully come sooner rather than later)!

We're back!

After nearly a month of back and forth single parenting, lots of plane rides and plenty of help from the family, Chris and I are finally back in the same city at the same time.  It took a lot of coordinating and we couldn't have done all we needed to for work without the amazing help of the ground crew - so for that, we have a huge shout out to BiBi, Zee, Aunt Stacey and Uncle Brad!  Thank you for being us while we were away!

To celebrate the fact that we are all back together, we decided to take Riley swimming.  He is still taking his once-a-week swim classes at the JCC and was happy to show off his "popcorn" skills (bobbing up and down and bouncing off the pool wall) but wanted mostly to swim in our arms and be thrown in the air.

Now we get to look forward to our family cruise, where I'm positive that we will be spending plenty of time in the pool and playing in the ocean!

When Daddy's away

October and November are crazy months, between the move, Chris in and out of town for work and my upcoming group.  But the one thing that remains constant and keeps us moving along is Riley.  And when one of us is out of town, we have to make sure to keep his distracted and busy enough so that he doesn't miss the missing parent.

I'd like to say that we do a pretty good job at this!  Today, it was beautiful outside so we took one of the last opportunities of the season to play outside on the swing set after school.  Then after dinner and bath time, we stuck to indoor activities.

There are still about a dozen boxes here and there, so Riley and I attacked his books tonight.  After they were all on the shelf, we had a few great boxes to play with.  So what do we do?  We make trains!