We went to Belize a couple springs back — Spring Break 2024, jungle half of the trip at Sleeping Giant Rainforest Lodge — and I learned something there that I cannot unlearn. It doesn’t bother me,…
If you read my Portugal post, you know how this started. Jennifer had opinions about my travel wardrobe. The citizens of Lisbon had opinions about my travel wardrobe. I came home suitably chastened and with a…
A new format: my unfiltered gut take on the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act ruling and the partisan-gerrymandering racket, followed by a fact-check of every claim I made. Bias up top. The check at the bottom.
From the moment we started planning the house, we knew there would eventually be a barn. Eventually being the operative word — we were already stretching to build the house, so the barn was going on…
My shoe philosophy has done a full lap. It started where everyone’s starts — slip-ons and Velcro, because I couldn’t tie laces yet — and it has now, decades later, returned to that exact spot. Different…
After bringing home my Model Y 7-seater, I quickly figured out what every Tesla owner figures out: this is the beginning of your spending, not the end. The car is sold on a minimalism story — fewer features, fewer parts,…
We had our 11 and 12-year-olds on spring break and a big Scandinavia trip planned with the grandparents in May, so we decided to keep things local. “Local” being a relative term — we live 70 miles north of NYC…
Tesla’s latest software update supposedly fixed the automatic high-beam adjustment. The release notes said as much. Mine still doesn’t work — and I think I’ve figured out what happened. The car is not switching down to low beam when it…
After four months and about 6,000 miles with my first EV — a used 2023 7-seat Model Y Long Range with the Acceleration Boost — I’m ready to give an honest report. The short version: I’d probably make the same…
I had a 2019 Honda Ridgeline and I really liked it. But we’d decided we needed a third row — for the occasional extra kid, or for piling everyone into one car when the grandparents came along. With two boys…
Yes, I bought a Tesla in November 2024. I want to address that up front, because it matters for everything that follows. By the time I bought the Model Y, the politics around the company were already fully on fire.…
Peer pressure around getting phones for kids, tweens, and teens is intense. If your kid already struggles to fit in, not having a device makes them feel worse. The cruel irony: giving them a device can isolate them further, just…
I’d had Electrolux earmarked as our next washer practically from the day we bought our LG in 2010. Our LG was reliable, but when it hit the spin cycle it shook the whole house like a small earthquake. With laundry…
We needed to stack our washer and dryer because of laundry-room space, and stacking kits aren’t universal — so once we picked the washer, we were locked into the matching Electrolux dryer. That’s how I ended up with the Electrolux…
We wanted to feel like we’d traveled somewhere foreign without spending a day in airports getting there. Montreal is the easiest version of that from the Hudson Valley. Five hours in the car, you cross a border, the signs change…
By spring break 2024 we’d done three cold-weather trips in a row — Ireland, Iceland, Germany — and we’d had enough of packing fleeces in March. We wanted heat. We wanted not to rent a car. We wanted a flight…
I spent a good part of my teenage and college winters skiing, and I’d always wanted to share that with our kids. But here’s the thing: skiing (or snowboarding) is now REALLY expensive. Rentals, helmets, tickets, clothing — it adds…
By fall 2022 we were finally crawling out of the COVID years and wanted to do something that felt like a real trip again. Play Airlines had just started flying out of Stewart — our regional airport, twenty minutes from…
Our Kitchen Aid refrigerator gave up, and we had to go shopping. When we built the house, most of the appliances came from online retailers and big-box stores. This time we went local. The criteria seemed simple: 36″ French door…
The trip to Germany was supposed to happen earlier. Originally spring 2022, to visit my mom, who was living there with my sister. We postponed when my sister tested COVID-positive days before departure, then postponed again when our younger son…
Between Christmas and New Year’s 2021 we’d had enough of the Hudson Valley in winter and decided to take the boys — Henry 9, Elias 7 — down to DC for the first time. The pandemic was still rolling along…
When I bought my Ridgeline in 2019, Honda sent me a survey. I did a thorough job on it, which apparently flagged me as someone worth asking more, because they sent a second, longer one. I gave them detailed answers…
Beyond the Woom bikes themselves, the best thing I bought for riding with young kids was the Follow Me Tandem. Honestly, one of the best things I’ve ever bought, period. The genius of it: your kid rides solo until they’re…
When I was looking to get our kids started on bikes, I did a lot of research. Two things came out of it: training wheels are a bad idea, and the right place to start is a balance bike. After…
April 14-19, 2019. Drove down from the Hudson Valley with Henry, 7, and Elias, 6. Five nights at the Williamsburg Lodge. The most important thing I can tell you about Colonial Williamsburg with kids in this age range is the…
Norwegian Air briefly offered direct flights from Stewart Airport to Dublin in 2018 (RIP Norwegian Air, we hardly knew ye), which is the kind of opportunity you don’t pass up when you live in the Hudson Valley and the alternative…
After another brutal New York winter we wanted sun, so we picked Tulum, which Jennifer and I had loved on pre-kid trips. January 2017. Henry was 5, Elias was 4. The plan was relaxed, uncrowded, familiar. Logistics: JetBlue out of…
Even that's Odd 