While 2018 wasn’t the best year for the blog, we had a blast in real life.

It was our first full year in Buffalo, including our first winter and full summer. (Apparently Buffalo doesn’t have a spring or fall with climate change the way it is. I’m pretty sure it went from snow to sweltering this spring and same for the fall.)

2018 started off with travel. We celebrated a late Christmas in Seattle and loved catching up with everyone.

Brandon taught his first class during the spring semester. He taught a mere 550 inquiring minds. Overall it was a positive experience and he’s getting ready to teach the class again in early 2019.

Over the summer, we took advantage of our flexible work schedules to celebrate some of our good friends’ love, traveling to Arizona and the Hudson River Valley. Both trips were so much fun and will be their own blog posts in the coming year.

Szerwos take the Grand Canyon

Our introduction to the Finger Lakes, en route to the Hudson River Valley

For Father’s Day, we went camping at Letchworth State Park, a first for Michael. We went with our best Buffalo friends and enjoyed it. We hope to camp again next spring/summer.

Father’s Day camping at Letchworth 2018

We continue to explore Buffalo and have really perfected our tour for guests who visit. That’s a blog post for another day, too.

Niagara Falls: One stop on our Buffalo tour

Professionally, I launched Delaware Park Living in September. It’s a monthly neighborhood newsletter magazine for the residents of one of the most established communities in Buffalo. I’m the publisher of the publication, which means I get to work with the residents, business sponsors, and our central design team to make a beautiful 30-40 page magazine each month.

Presenting: Delaware Park Living

Halloween 2018 was pretty epic. I went all out and created an award-winning (seriously! I won $100 for it!) Mater costume for Michael. He continues to love playing in it. I’m working on a “how to” tutorial for the costume as there isn’t a complete one currently online. Brandon and I phoned it in and were both Waldo. We’ve already started thinking about Halloween 2019 costumes though.

Where’s Waldo? Hanging out in Buffalo!

Mater with his two besties

Michael’s day-time costume: Captain America.

Captain America with his super squad

We finished up the year with a pre-Christmas holiday trip to NYC. We’ve been there before and seeing it in all of its holiday splendor was magical. We caught up with friends, shopped the holiday pop-up markets, rode through Central Park in a horse-drawn carriage while sipping hot chocolate, and walked more than 13 miles one day, among lots of other fun things. I think we should make it an annual tradition!

Rockefeller Plaza all done up for the holidays

The only thing missing was snow! {Central Park Carriage Ride}

Merry Christmas from NYC!

We’re actually looking forward to our Buffalo winter and the snow, and all of the adventures we have planned for 2019. We can’t wait to share them with you. More posts in 2019, I promise.

What’s Michael doing these days?

Our 3.25 year old is SO active. He loves running and jumping and can move for hours… unless you want him to walk beside you on a neighborhood walk. Then his “shoes are hard” and he requires holding.

Michael knows the alphabet (both the song and capital and lower case letter identification) and can count to 20.

He’s back in swim lessons and getting more and more comfortable bobbing underwater. He loves school and has several best friends.

He’s sweet and sassy and still even likes to snuggle sometimes. Michael learned Christmas carols this year and his favorite song is Jingle Bells which he’s recently re-titled to “Jingle Smells.” He’s been using the potty since his third birthday and loves using potty words any chance he can (toot, tooty, poop, poopy, etc).