SPRING 2026
We had a fun, albeit abbreviated, Spring. Abbreviated around home. Charlotte spent the first two weeks of May in the Philippines. She served as a flower girl in her uncle’s wedding. She also spend time with mom in a house her Lola recently had built. The last two weeks of May Charlotte and Dad traveled two-thirds of the way across the US. All the way out to Scottsbluff, Nebraska and back – the details of that trip are separately tracked.
 
The Michener Museum hosted an “Artwork of Eric Carle” exhibit so of course we had to attend, unfortunately, forgetting to dress Charlotte in her Hungry Caterpillar costume from Halloween two holidays ago. These sorts of exhibits tend to make parents feel good, make them feel like they are introducing culture to their child, etc. I’m not sure how much Charlotte appreciated the artwork component of the exhibit. For me, it was interesting to see how the original artwork, the details of how pieces of paper came together to form characters like the Hungry Caterpillar, transformed into the pages of Carle’s books. There was a very cool Hungry Caterpillar statue. Charlotte completed a complicated Hungry Caterpillar puzzle. 
I’ve unintentionally avoided the Philadelphia Flower Show for over forty years. With this year being the 250th Anniversary of America, 2026 was the year to finally make a visit as the Show’s theme commemorated this momentous celebration. I was a bit disappointed with the Flower Show – I was expecting something bigger. I thought that the grand design exhibits would take over the entire main hall, not a quarter of the space. I thought we’d spend an hour walking around, not thirty minutes. The exhibits were great, there just wasn’t as many as I expected. We spent most of our time molding clay (is there a pottery class in the future?) and building our own succulent pot. Doubt that Charlotte and I make this an annual tradition, as many Philadelphians do, but I'm she will return in the next forty years.
One of the best places we’ve visited in Charlotte’s adventures is the Crayola Factory in Easton. There’s a lot to do here and for the most part it is crayon-centric. You can melt a crown then re-harden it into a ring or car. You can create melted crown art. You can create your own crayon name. This visit we spent quite a bit of time in the playground and designing a snake. We ate lunch at the Easton Public Market. Charlotte will need to visit with Lola and Papa before kindergarten starts – I’m thinking that August 2027 will be filled with a “Best of…” from preschool age adventures.
EASTER 2026
The poor Easter Bunny. Annie saw the Easter Bunny, scared the bunny, chased the bunny all over the house, and the gifts were scattered in several rooms instead of in a single basket. Charlotte tracked down several Barbie dolls culminating with Barbie Dream House.
Charlotte also did a much better job of collected eggs at the Conshohocken Egg Scramble this year – no grabbing and shaking and putting the eggs back down, just grabbing the egg and putting into her basket. Next year we will work on the circuitous route she took to pick up eggs.
SCRANTON ROAD TRIP
When you’ve been everywhere, where to you go? Scranton. That’s mean. We actually had a few fun time in Scranton and the town was somewhat impressive – nice neighborhoods, some cool buildings, good restaurants. It was a good, quick trip.

But first…Wilkes-Barre. Two photos of Wilke-Barre that present the town in a good light otherwise this had the feel of a depressing coal town – the life had been sucked out of the town. I was expecting Scranton to be similar but Scranton was rocking in comparison. We went across the Susquehanna River though and Kingston, Forty Fort, Wyoming all felt like nice small towns.
​What first comes to mind with Scranton? The Office. Our route around town would take us to several The Office destinations. The Everhart Museum was hosting an The Office exhibit which turned out to be a bit of a dud. The photo of the Dundee and the character costumes, that was the exhibit. $30 and fifteen minutes later we were on our way. 
We tracked down the Scranton welcome sign, which due to fans inducing traffic concerns was moved indoors to the Steamtown Mall. Other stops for the Penn Paper building, a cast mural in Scranton’s “downtown”, and a Dwight Schrute mural on a second hand / antiques store. All good stops. ​
We spent an hour or so in Nay Aug Park – our visit coincided with a few other kids descending on the playground at the same time. The Dave Wenzel Tree House is the park, Scranton’s, and supposedly one of northeast PA’s better attractions. Not sure about that. The viewing platform, not a tree house, provides great views…of I-81.
A few shots of the Scranton courthouse square area – I don’t want to oversell Scranton but it was nice. I’m glad we finally made it up here. A stop at the pool and dinner at the Pirate-themed Cooper’s Seafood House closed out the day.
The next morning, we went to the Electric City Trolley Museum and the Steamtown  National Historic Site. Good stops. I’ve always thought it was a bold claim for Scranton to call itself the Electric City. What’s that about? In the early 1900s the entire Scranton / Wilkes-Barre valley was connected via electric trolleys. A main line connected the two book end cities, however, smaller lines ran to the small towns up (or down) the valley. Steamtown’s Roundhouse is worth a photo stop alone if you haven’t seen one of these before.
The area has a couple of good pizza places. Before the trip was planned, I was completely unaware that Old Forge was the Pizza Capital of the World. Seriously. Right up there with New Haven, Connecticut. Another seriously. Old Forge is known for its tray pizza – the coal workers would leave the mines and they were so hungry that pizza was served on what amounts to a baking sheet. Thus it’s a rectangular pizza. Charlotte could not get over the pizza’s rectangular shape and refused to take a bite. On the way up, we stopped at Sabatini’s. We heard about Sabatini’s at Charlotte’s preschool. A mom of another child in her class was wearing a Sabatini’s t-shirt. A few parents made comments about how Sabatini’s had the best pizza – profuse, unusually exorbitant praise for this place to the point that I went from eavesdropping to making a note that we’d need to stop here someday. Yes, the pizza is that good. Not worth a two-hour drive, because no pizza is, but a must-stop on any Scranton trip. Charlotte was much more excited to eat the circle pizza.
If you thought Scranton was scraping the bottom of the road trip bucket…enter Wilmington. Ha, another needless knock for a place I enjoy visiting every once in a while, but proof that when I say Charlotte goes everywhere, I mean everywhere. We picked up a new tent at Cabela’s. Grabbed a coffee at Brew Ha Ha’s Trolley Square location – if you are ever looking for an “alternative side” to Wilmington, head here – good spot in a nice residential area. We stopped at Wilmington’s Natural History Museum and the Book Barn (more like the “Completely Random Old Books You’d Never Buy” Barn. I hoped to pick up a copy of Willa Cather’s My Antonia, no luck. None to be found in a literal book barn.
Tea party at Tilly Mint’s Tea Room and we then spent three hours at Cavalry Church’s indoor playground. Charlotte may be allergic to pollen so we spent as much of this weekend inside as we could.
Dad took advantage of an extra weekend with Charlotte to take a last minute trip to Harrisburg and Hershey. In Harrisburg, we checked out the Capitol building, the Broad Street Market, and the Midtown Scholar Book Store – bookended with coffee stops and arguably one of the best hamburgers Dad has eaten in a while at Burger Yum.
We wasted no time and checked into the Hershey Lodge early in the afternoon. We immediately changed into our bathing suits and spent the next two hours the hotel’s water park. We met the Hershey Kiss after dinner.
The next day we visited Hershey’s Chocolate World. Every time Dad says the free “factory” ride hasn’t changed since he was a kid.
We also blitzed the National Civil War Museum. Charlotte was very concerned about the injured soldiers and horses – not so much in any of the other exhibits. Dad took note and will factor this into the evaluation of stops for our upcoming cross country trip. Only two months but we squeezed in a lot.
We had so much fun playing together this spring. Charlotte enjoyed hosting tea parties for her toys and snuggling with her stuffies. We made good use of a science kit that she received as a birthday gift making everything from facial masks to volcanoes. She also liked playing games such as making pillow forts but took it to another level by playing "hotel" on our stairs.