New Year's Eve in West Palm Beach

We got up at 3am to make a 6am flight out of Richmond to Fort Lauderdale and were at Grandpa Steve's house by 10am, having stopped for donuts and groceries on the way to West Palm:

Sunrise from the plane

Grandpa Steve always hides coins under the cushions of his porch chairs for the kids. He used to say the change fell out of his pockets and provide each child with a ziplock to collect it up, but he has moved on to more exotic coins the last few visits. This time, each chair had a roll of buffalo nickels on it, already in a ziplock bag. He claims they fell out of his pocket that way.

After a midday nap, we headed to the beach about 4 in the afternonn

The water was a balmy 80 degrees and Benji wanted to get in

The light was perfect and they humored me with a few pictures

Reading at sunset

Layover in Virginia

We got back to Virginia late Thursday evening and took off for Florida super early Monday morning. In between, we ate meals at home, relaxed, re-packed and did some fun family things, including games and 2 movies (Mary Poppins Returns (all of us) and The Greatest Showman Singalong (Ruth and Benji):

Benji loved trying out the game we got from SSecret Ssanta

The Greatest Showman came with props

Benji spent much of that evening pretending to be PT Barnum

A Few Last NY Pictures

The night before we left NY, all the cousins came back over to hang out. Grandma had bought them an ugly sweater cookie kit to decorate:

Benji opted out of decorating (I did his) but not out of eating the cookie

Christmas Day 2018

Benji was happy to get walkie-talkies from Santa

And National Parks Monopoly from Grandma and Pop-pop

Traditional cousins picture

minus Harper

Who continued to love on Benji

Westchester Day, 2018

We drove over the river to see Aunt Barbara (and family) on Sunday. Mark, Scott and Sara were all able to join us for brunch, so it was a packed and festive house:

Abby and Benji huddled near Kevin for most of the "adult talk"

Santa came by on the fire truck with candy canes for Joey and Benji

After brunch, we stopped over in West Harrison to see Tom and Christine's new place before heading back over the bridge:

Harper loved crawling on her cousins

Benji read her a book

Benji also got to help Uncle Tom test the water in the fish tank, which he loved:

By the time we got back to Rockland, it was dinner and we decided to visit Posa Posa for our annual treat before hibernating for Christmas.

Winter Break Begins 2018

We made our way to New York starting in the wee hours of Saturday (we left at 5am) and arrived in time to have most of the afternoon to visit with all the Paquette cousins:

Harper with Uncle Kevin

Harper latched on to Benji right away. She asked him to color with her

Patrick joining in

And now Abby, too -- she has them all wrapped around her little finger

Winter All-Band concert

Last pre-break post! The city hosted a band concert at the Martin Luther King Performing Arts Center of the bands from all across the district (so Walker, Buford and CHS). The 5th grade beginning band did not perform, but the Above and Beyond Band, of which Benji is a part, was invited to play a song (iJingle) with the 6th graders. You couldn't really see Benji once he was sitting, but here is a picture of him as he walked onstage to join the (already seated) 6th grade band: