Welcome to our web site. Feel free to peruse and we hope you enjoy.           -- Paul & Suzanne Sanschagrin Latest News/Changes 9-Aug-2008: Hey, not too bad this time. Not even a month between updates. We have been back from Michigan for a couple of weeks now. It was a wonderful trip and very relaxing. As much as I love traveling overseas, there always an element of stress involved. For this trip, we were basically visiting some friends and seeing some places that we had been several times before, so there wasn't a real big push to "do it all". We spent the first night with Leslie (Paul's graduate advisor). It was great to see her again (after 6 years) and she really enjoyed meeting Kyle. On Sunday, we headed up north to Paul Murphy's house. He lives in south Florida now, but we coordinated our summer vacations to meet at his "summer" home. (It was his home before he moved and has been in his family for several generations.) Kyle finally got to go to his first beach. He loved making sand castles, but wasn't all that excited about the waves. After Paul's, we spent a couple of nights on Mackinac Island. For those of you who don't know, Mackinac Island is in the strait between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. It's unique in that it doesn't allow cars and has a Victorian feel. It's a bit touristy, but is still nice, especially at night. We seemed to have lucked out as it wasn't all that busy. Then we headed to Ann Arbor, after stopping for a night in Birch Run to break up the trip. It was neat to see that not much had changed. We were able to hit the farmer's market which is one of the nicest I've been to in the US. We also ate at couple of places we liked from our time there and did a "Meijer's run". Aside from having a defective gas gauge in the car (it would go to half and then stop there), we had a wonderful trip. As for the rest of the summer, we still plan to head to shore and see a ballgame. We're also planning a trip to city (tomorrow, actually). We going to be heading to NH to visit Paul's Dad & Step-mom for Labor Day. That should be fun (except for the drive as Kyle thought the 3-hour trip from Paul Murphy's to Mackinac and the 4-hour trip from Mackinac to Birch Run were too long). Then it's on to fall stuff. 10-Jul-2008: I know it's been a while since the last update. We have done a few things in the past few months, mostly in May and June. In May, Kyle's daycare had their Family Fun Day picnic. It was a great time. In early June, we took a day and headed off to Sesame Place (about 2 hours away). We really enjoyed it. The park is geared towards younger kids, so it was great for Kyle. Also, about half the park is a water park, and Kyle loves playing in the water. A great moment was when Kyle ran up to hug Cookie Monster. At the end of that week, Kyle and I headed to Florida to visit my Mom and Grandparents for a few days. I was a bit nervous about taking Kyle down there on his own without Suzanne, but everything went very well and we had a great time. Kyle was very well behaved. At the end of June (through July 4th), Suzanne's parents came for a week to visit. We had a nice time. We even went to see fireworks on July 4th, which Kyle enjoyed. (The rest of us would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't for the rain. At least I got some good photos.) Updated photos of Kyle are at: Mar & Apr May & Jun Jul & Aug A camera club friend of mine recently opened a new studio. For the opening, he had a small open house, during which he took some photos of Kyle. He used one of these for an online photo competition site (where I also periodically submit). The photo did okay in the competition, but you can find it here. if you want to take a look. (Peggy, this is the one I mentioned.) Our plans for the rest of the summer include our trip to Michigan for a week. We're looking forward to this to visit some old friends and some places we like. Later, we're hoping to spend a day at the shore and take in a baseball game (minor league about 20 minute from us). 24-Feb-2008: We have had a pretty quiet past couple of months. Kyle moved up to the next level of swimming lessons. It is a bit more organized and he's a bit cranky, but the second session went better than the first, so hopefully the trend continues. About the only thing we did was to spend President's Day weekend in Baltimore, which is about 3 1/2 hours from here. We had a very nice time and Kyle really enjoyed the Port Discovery children's museum. Of course there are some photos (under Feb 2008: A Weekend in Baltimore). We also spent some time around the Inner Harbor, visited the aquarium, and had a great dinner at Amicci's in Little Italy. We stayed at the very nice Homewood Suites (only opened in October) in Harbor East, so everything was only a short walk. We don't have any plans for upcoming events. We're starting to plan our summer trip to Michigan, but that's still a ways off. We hope everyone else is doing well. 05-Jan-2008: Christmas is over. We had a very nice holiday. Suzanne sister Beth and her husband Doug came up in the middle of December. We had a very nice few days, including a visit to the city. Suzanne's parents came up for the holidays. On Christmas Day, Paul's Dad and step-mom came over from Pennsylvania. We had quite a nice day. Kyle got a big wooden train table (like Thomas, but a cheaper "no-name" brand) as his big present. It ended up taking him three days to open all of his presents as he kept wanting to play with them and the other things he had already opened. (This was the case even though we put away a few before he opened them for later.) If you're interested, here's our 2007 Christmas Letter. It's really hard to believe Kyle is already 2 years old (or will be tomorrow). We had a small party with some of his friends the weekend after Christmas, went out to dinner with Jack and Mary Lou while they were here, and went out to lunch with Peter and Theresa. 12-Dec-2007: Well, our big adventure is in the past. Before that, we had Halloween. Kyle dressed up as a "Lil' Monster" and was very cute. He had a fun time at his daycare's Halloween parade and then later we visited the town's celebration at the nearby park. He did a little trick-or-treating, but not a lot. Two days after Halloween, it was off for our grand adventure. Kyle was reasonably well behaved on the flight over, though he didn't sleep as much as we would have liked. We had no real problems with the flights. Our arrival into Frankfurt was somewhat delayed, but not enough to make us catch a later train to Marburg. (We did have to hurry a bit.) We had a very nice couple of days visiting our friends Joanna and Job and spent a day visiting our friends Christoph, Edith, and Mathilde outside of Frankfurt. We spent Monday night in Mainz to make it easier to catch our Tuesday flight to Venice. We quite enjoyed Mainz, never having visiting while we were in Marburg. We arrived in Venice on Tuesday evening and got settled into the apartment. Suzanne's parents, Jack and Mary Lou, arrived Wednesday morning and we met them at the airport. We had a nice few days in Venice, though I had forgotten just how touristy it is. We did a few sites (St. Mark's, the Doge's Palace, the markets), but mostly did a lot of walking. We left Saturday morning for Rome, which, other than missing our train and having to catch the next one, went fine. We had a very nice stay in Rome. The apartment was great and very well located (right down the street from Campo di Fiori). Of course we saw lots of sights including the Forum, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, St. Peter's, Piazza Navonna, and Santa Maria Maggiora. We didn't do a lot of museums as we didn't think Kyle was really up for that, though we all enjoyed the Palazzo Massimo museum and Jack and Mary Lou had a nice tour of the Vatican Museums. Once again, we did lots of walking and had some really good food. We spent a nice day out at Ostia Antica, where Kyle could run around (crawling over 2000 year old ruins). For Saturday morning, we had scheduled a car service to pick us up for a ride back to the airport, which worked out well. (Jack and Mary Lou left a few hours before us as their flight was earlier.) The flights back were uneventful. Kyle even ate almost all of his dinner (we didn't mind the mess, but what airline serves spaghetti with tomato sauce to kids on a plane?) and sat in his own seat for the entire 8 hour flight. We had a car service take us to and from the airport since it was bit cheaper than parking for 15 days and while we flew out of Newark, we flew into JFK. (Flying back to Newark would have required a flight from Rome leaving at 5:50 due to connections.) All in all it was a good trip, though traveling with a 2 year old made it very different from our first one in 2003. Of course you probably want to see photos from the trip and here they are: Trip Report Germany (and getting there) Venice Rome Ostia Antica (day trip from Rome) I hope to have a full, detailed trip report up in the next couple of days as well. Aside from our trip, we have been getting ready for Christmas and for a visit from Suzanne's sister Beth and her husband Doug. We'll be at home for the holidays once again, but Jack and Mary Lou will be coming up for the week. It's hard to believe that Kyle's second birthday is fast approaching, but soon he'll be two.