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After years of wanting to try it out, we finally got a taste of free furniture store daycare. It was magical! Kinderparadies at Moebel Martin in Mainz, conveniently located next to the cafe (we literally ran into friends from daycare whose grandparents brought the kids to play while they got a coffee), entertained Navin for a good 2+ hours. As far as I'm aware, daycares at furnitures is not a thing in the US except for Ikea. But boy is it ever here. Ikea offers it, therefore so do all other furniture stores. Here's how it works: Kids must be 3+. There is a time limit - usually 2 hours. Trained caregivers will watch your kids and even provide snacks / drinks. You can bring house shoes for your kiddos - they likely won't be able to wear outside shoes in the play area. That's pretty much it! The only disappointing part was that Nayan couldn't go too - but we will be going back when he turns 3 in a few months! The staff will call you once the time is up or if

After what seems like no time at all, we have a 5 year old! It happened so fast, and he has become very opinionated lately. Especially when it came to birthday party planning. For the first time, he didn't want a pinata, but did want a World Cup theme. He also wanted a treasure hunt - this is really popular with the kids here and pretty much every party we attend has some kind of treasure hunt component. There's been a police-finding-a-robber hunt, a photo-based treasure hunt around the university, and (the coolest) a treasure hunt through the forest. Naturally, we obliged. Google turned up a wonderful resource for themed birthday parties:  Geburtstagsfee.de . We acquired plates, cups, balloons, trinkets for the goody bags, and (the most popular) cake decorations, all with a soccer theme. Navin helped me make his red velvet sheet  cake  - it tasted so good! One trick we learned was to use the red food coloring from the Asian grocery store (powder form) - the red color was

A perfect day in London. That was the plan, and we managed just about everything, even good weather, for a trip to see  Hamilton  and celebrate 10 years of marriage. For the first time in a while, I successfully convinced S to plan everything well ahead of time. Well, except our flights - we ended up paying a bit more than expected since I waited until 6 weeks in advance to book... The theatre tickets were booked as soon as I found out (via Facebook) that they were released for the London show. When Harry & Meghan got engaged, I rushed to book the  Taj St James Hotel  near Buckingham Palace, and a convenient 7 minute walk to the theatre, just in case there was a rush on hotel bookings. Finally, for all I'd heard (and enjoyed for dinner) about  Dishoom's  breakfast, I booked a breakfast table for Saturday morning. Day 1:  So our plans for Friday were set - after setting up our tag-team of babysitters and village of neighbors to look after the boys, dropping them off a