Val-isms

Post holiday wrap-up!

Passover at my sister Elizabeth's was really fun.  It had enough prayers and readings that the attention span of 6 children was dealt with correctly.  The food was amazing and we headed back to CT by 9pm with Sophie in her pj's curled up in the back of the Mini with her blanket & pillow!

2nd night at our friends' home was much more serious, but still lots of fun.  Childless Seders are like that!  It's our second year of attending this and so we recognized most of the 18 other guests.  More great food and lots of wine, too!

Friday morning, I dropped Sophie & my ex at the train station by 7:30am.  Linda & I hit the road about 9:30, after picking up coffee and bagels for the ride.  It was a beautifully sunny and mild (high 50's) day - perfect for a road trip.

We arrived at our friends' home about 1:30-ish with a lovely breeze, sunny skies and temps in the 60's!  WOW!  Their cottage is absolutely perfect.  2 bedrooms and a bath, but they blew out the ceiling, and built a loft area over the bedroom side of the house and so there is quite an airy feel to the place, as well as rustic, with the pine floors and wood walls.  We LOVED it!  Very comfy!

Though it rained all day on Saturday and got cold (40's), we slept in til 10am, had a leisurely brunch, watched a movie and then headed out about 4pm to do some errands, visit some of their friends, etc...

Sunday we woke up a bit earlier to a still cold (40's) and very windy, but very sunny day outside.  Brenda & Mary went to Easter services at a local church and had left us with a pot of coffee and the NY Times.  Perfect.

After breakfast with some of the neighbors, we headed out to Provincetown to walk Commercial Street.  We had a late lunch about 2 at the Lobster Pot - YUM!

We packed up the car and headed home about 4 and hit absolutely no traffic, arriving at 8pm.  Our 'boys' were happy to see us and we were happy to see that they had survived nicely and without too much destruction while their 'parents' were gone!

Sophie & my ex arrived without incident on Saturday - happy to be in the nice warm weather of northern central Florida.  I got a call on Sunday afternoon, though, that Sophie's grandmother (who is wheelchair bound and on dialysis) was being wheeled out of the restaurant  by her husband after having Easter dinner and he didn't see the curb and rolled her over it, tilting the chair which caused the grandmother to fall out and in the process break her leg above the knee.  The rest of the afternoon was spent getting her admitted in the hospital.

There will be surgery to fix the bone tomorrow.  And today is my ex's birthday.  From what I'm hearing, Sophie is being a trooper on her Spring break vacation.  Hope the rest of her vacation goes better.

YAY - #6!

UCONN won and it was just as emotional as I thought it would be.  For Renee, Geno and the rest of the team - just incredible game and season.

It was wonderful to hear from my family in Israel earlier today and now I'm off to NYC for the East Coast seder with all of it's original traditions! :)

Passover 2009... the anticipation

Since tomorrow night I'll be busy making Matzo balls and watching the UCONN women win their 6th Championship, I will tell you what our Passover is looking like.

My original plan involved just the 3 of us - Linda, Sophie & me.  My parents remain in Jerusalem where they will join my brother David and his family for Passover (which I deeply miss being apart from).  My brother in California does not partake in the Passover festivities and is probably unaware that it IS Passover. 

My sister has become rather remote over the past year, for personal reasons that I completely understand, so I had no idea what she was doing for the holiday.  I was pleasantly surprised when she e-mailed me last week, upon her return from Israel (having taken her kids Maisie & Noa there for spring break!), so I ventured to invite her and the girls up to CT to join us for Passover.  As it turned out, she preferred to host it at her place in Manhattan.

So between us, though she is certainly being MUCH more domestic than I am, the Passover Seder will take place on the the 1st night of Pesach.  Sophie is thrilled (as am I) that we will be having more of a crowd feel, as a Seder of 3 can be a bit quiet and quick.

Liz has invited one of her closest friends (who just happens to not be Jewish) and her family (husband and 3 children), and 2 other friends, so a crowd of 13 will gather and most likely have a disjointed but guaranteed original Seder!  The cousins will most certainly have a fabulous time!

We'll pick Sophie up from school on Wednesday at 3:30 and get on the road, only stopping once at Stew Leonard's for a 'seltzer run'!  (We'll see just how many 12-can cases of seltzer can fit in a Mini Cooper!) and hoping to get to the Upper West Side by 5-ish.

In addition to the seltzer, will be the hard boiled eggs, my parents' Seder plate, and the matzo balls!  I think that roasted chicken, some vegetables and who knows what else, will be served that evening.

The ride home will have Linda & Sophie happily snoozing and I'll enjoy the peaceful silence while I rehash the evening in my head, remembering Passover dinners of my past.  I will wonder why I never really appreciated those times when we were all together.  How it was a chore to have to spend an evening with my family.  And why must we read all that stuff out loud?  If only I had realized then how precious those evenings were.

As I've only had 2 Passovers with Linda & Sophie, I'm still in the process of getting into any kind of 'traditions'.  I hope that in the years to come, I come to create a certain kind of 1st night for us and get confident enough to invite any family and friends over to join us.

Thursday morning, Sophie & I are taking the morning off to go to a family Passover service at Temple.  The Jr Choir is singing and it should be a fun service with our Community.  Linda doesn't have that kind of flexibility with her job, so she won't be joining us.

This is the 2nd year that Linda & I have been invited to 2nd night Seder at our friend Bari's home.  She has between 20-25 people over and it's a very creative Seder with a diverse group of people from our Temple.  It was a lot of fun last year and I'm sure it will be this year, as well.

Early Friday morning, I'm dropping Sophie and my ex at the train station as theystart their journey to Florida for spring break.  They'll be gone until the 19th.

Linda & I will get on the road to Cape Cod about 9am on Friday morning as we've been invited to spend the weekend with our friends Brenda & Mary at their summer home in Wellfleet, MA.  Though the weather isn't supposed to be very warm or sunny, it will be nice to get away with them.  They were our roommates when we went to Vermont back in January.

We'll be back late on Easter Sunday.  No bowling.

My next post will provide a comparison of what I anticipated versus what REALLY happened... should prove to be interesting!

So, to all those who celebrate Passover, have a Happy Passover and to those who celebrate Easter, have a Happy Easter.  For those who are just enjoying the beginning of spring, have a great rest of your week!

... and it comes down to 1 game

UCONN beat Stanford tonight to get into the Championship game on Tuesday night with Louisville!  I was so glad it wasn't a close game, like the Oklahoma/Louisville game was.  And I'm thrilled that we won't have to hear about those damn Paris twins any more.  Jeez.  Bubba -- they're all yours again!

I've been busy with who knows what over the past week, which has made me too tired to even read other people's blogs, much less blog on my own.

Suffice it to say that things are good here in my world.

Sherry the Fairy is still alive and well. and I met another of Sophie's friend's Mom on Saturday, who is also involved in Fairy note writing and wants to know where all this started!  Too funny.  Their fairy is Tracy and the girl's Dad is doing all the tiny print note writing!

I'll end with a cute anecdote.  (Keep in mind that Linda is not Jewish... but you'll see how much being involved with someone who IS Jewish is having an affect on her!)

When being served her dinner at the diner before bowling, she asked the waiter for her usual staple, red pepper flakes, and he replied that they didn't have any.

After her walked away, she turned to me and said incredulously, "They have a menu bigger than the Tanakh, and they don't have red pepper flakes??!!!" (and she said the "ch" sound at the end of the word perfectly, I might add!)