We came off a whirlwind October expecting more of the same, but November ended up being fairly quiet.
We had a fun trip planned down to Savannah and Hilton Head that we cancelled due to travel issues from the government shutdown. With that time freed up, we had some local fun, checking out the Camden Aquarium and spending a cool, windy day in NYC.
My father (Mike Sr.) was under the weather on his birthday so we had to push his celebration back to the end of the month. We had a fun time watching a runny-nosed Harvey run around, eating too much food, and getting our butts kicked by Matthews and Xandria in a few games of “Grab the Mic” 😂🎤😒
Thanksgiving was great and Harvey got his first glimpse of Santa at the Cranford town tree lighting event.
Other than that, things were pretty routine so we’ll get right to the pictures. And next month we’ll have a year-end round up and some big news for 2026. Stay warm out there!
We’ll start with the important stuff – photos of Harvey 😂- and end with this month’s wrap up.
October flew by, and if we had to pick a theme for the month, it would be balance.
It felt like we were constantly managing our familybalance sheet: one side tracking the big, necessary “withdrawals” for work and travel, and the other tracking the small, consistent “deposits” that make it all worthwhile.
On the “withdrawal” side of the balance sheet, the month was defined by travel. Sarah was on the move for work—a lot. She kicked off October with a week-long trip to Malaysia (business class on Emirates was a highlight) and then, just to make sure her suitcase didn’t get too dusty, ended the month with another trip to Canada, splitting time between Toronto and Montreal. While we’re proud of her, it was definitely a big withdrawal from the family time account.
But the wonderful thing about life is how it always finds a way to balance the books.
With Sarah on the road, the “father-son” account saw massive deposits. Harvey and I had a ton of great one-on-one time, and the “grandparent” account got a huge boost as well. It was a team effort: Sarah’s mom and Eric spent a great afternoon with Harvey, and my parents were absolute lifesavers, stepping in for lots of quality time. It was a huge win for everyone and a great reminder of how lucky we are.
In the middle of all this movement, Sarah and I celebrated a huge milestone: our 5th wedding anniversary!
It was fitting. An anniversary isn’t just one day; it’s the result of 1,826 small, daily “deposits” over five years. It’s the perfect reminder of what all that consistency can turn into.
We saw that same idea of small, steady investments everywhere this month. Sarah and I just wrapped up an 8-week tennis clinic, which was blast. At the same time, Harvey (who is 19 months old now 🤯) has continued his swimming lessons and is getting much more comfortable in the water.
We wrapped up the month with a perfect “deposit” in the family memory account: celebrating Halloween with my parents. Harvey had an absolute blast with all the trick-or-treaters.
It was a full, chaotic, and ultimately a lovely month. The kind that reminds you that a balanced life isn’t about the balance sheet looking perfect every day. It’s about managing the big withdrawals with the small deposits, and making sure that in the end, we come out ahead.
September went fast. It was a fairly relaxing month, all things considered. You can see the photos above.
Harvey turned 18 months old and has been adding more words to his repertoire every day(🤯). We had lots of good family time, went to some local events, and even made it to the beach before the official end of summer.
Fun thing that happened was a movie filming on our street at a local restaurant call the Thirsty Turtle – you can see a photo of the restaurant with the windows all blacked out above. It was fun seeing all the crew doing their thing for a couple days.
Looking back, September was a perfect month before an extremely busy 4th quarter which kicks off this week with Sarah going to Malaysia for work for a week followed closely by a trip to Canada.
We will let you know how it goes and make sure she gets lots of photos. We’ll be back here next month – have a great one!
The first half of the month was marked by Michael’s jury duty on a murder trial. We will save those stories for another time, but there were long days at the courthouse and lots of grandparent time for Harvey, as Mike Sr. and Georgann were lifesavers, watching Harvey a few days/week.
Immediately following jury duty, Sarah went back to Peru during the week of the 18th. While Lima was lovely and she got to see more of the city, the real highlight of her trip was flying business class and regaining her status with United lol.
Those were the big things that took up 3 weeks of the month, but we fit some fun and catching up with friends in where we could. We celebrated our friends Matt and Zia at their wedding, caught up with some of Michael’s high school friends and their kids once at the beginning of the month and again during LDW, spent a Sunday with Brian, Chelsea, and Elaine, and fit in two birthday celebrations for Elaine’s 3rd birthday(8/23) and Georgann’s XXth birthday (8/27).
We had a beautiful and relaxing end of the month over LDW, but it’s full speed ahead as we enter active fall season. Hope everyone had a great summer and has an even better fall.
July was action packed. We had flash floods and days that felt like we were living in a sauna. Through that, we went on a road trip, welcomed a couple of our favorite out-of-towners, spent time at the pool, got a first hair cut, and had lots of good family time.
The month started with Harvey’s first haircut 🥲, pool time, and meeting cousin Jenny on the 4th of July which was a great surprise.
The next big adventure was our road trip to visit Sarah’s dad, Jeff, and wife, Nancy. We initially planned to drive out to them in Minnesota, but they were looking for an excuse to visit Chicago and we were happy for a shorter drive, so we decided to meet in the Windy City. On the way there we made few stops in PA with Sarah’s work colleagues and spent the night in Pittsburgh at the Priory hotel which is very cool place.
Once we got to Chicago we had a great few days with Jeff and Nancy. We saw some sights when we weren’t melting (Lincoln Park neighborhood, the aquarium, and zoo), ate great food, and had more than a few glasses of wine with Nancy. We also got to celebrate Jeff’s birthday and Harvey got some quality grandparent time.
We wish we had a few more days in Chi-town, but we had to make our way home. On the return trip after uneventful driving through Indiana and Ohio, we stayed the night in Mars, PA with Michael’s cousin Ryan, his wife Debbie, and their daughter Miranda, home from school. It was a short visit but we had a blast. Harvey was both terrified and fascinated by their pets Juno (cat) and Luna (dog) which is par for the course 😂
After leaving western PA our last stop was lunch with Sarah’s grandmother in Ephrata. She’s been alone since her husband and Sarah’s grandfather passed away last summer, so it was nice to check in and see how she’s doing.
Overall it was a great trip. We broke in the new car and got some great family time. With all of the stops, it wasn’t quite the relaxing trip we envisioned, but we’re grateful that it worked out.
The last half of the month was a blur. There was the flooding previously mentioned, a business team BBQ, and our good friends, Andrew and Emma, from Lexington, KY paid us a visit. Harvey got to spend some fun time with Aunt Emma and Uncle Andrew, we relaxed, showed them around Cranford, and we caught a NY Liberty game at the Barclay’s Center which was awesome – we highly recommend going to a game if you haven’t recently, the energy was way better than a Nets game 😂
I’ll put all the random assortment of photos below and be more prepared for next month’s post so we can get back on track. Hope everyone has a great August.
