We got together at Mom and Dad’s for brunch to celebrate Matt’s 39th birthday (Ed. Note: How is it possible that my baby brother is almost 40 years old? I’m not old enough for that). The kids had a great time playing together. And Jonathan remains completely enamored of his cousin “Fuzzball” (a/k/a Ella).

With Bubbie’s unveiling scheduled for Sunday, June 13, Martie and Bob Kramer and their granddaughter Rylei were in town for a few days. Mikaela, Samantha, Jonathan (and even Ella) enjoyed the chance to catch up with their cousin. The fun came first – dinner out together at Martie & Bob’s old favorite, Waid’s.

Then, on Saturday, playing at Monkey Bizness (the rain interfered with plans for the Zoo). Saturday evening Rylei came over and the kids made and decorated cookies.

With Rabbi Levin unavailable due to his back injury and Rabbi Harris also unavailable, I conducted the unveiling ceremony at Bubbie’s graveside on Sunday morning. I edited the ceremony on the fly, as I watched the storm clouds approaching. The raindrops started falling just as we said they last Amen, and by the time we were pulling onto the highway the rain was falling in sheets. After the ceremony, we all (plus many more extended family members) gathered back and Marcia and Larry’s for brunch. The kids got more time to play together, the adults got to catch up, and we all ate waaayyyy too much.

Our Passover season started with Jonathan’s CDC model seder. We enjoyed the usual mix of cute Passover songs about working for Pharaoh and a plague of frogs and opportunities for the kids to sample seder plate foods (Jon liked the hard-boiled egg, the matzah, and the celery dipped in salt water. The horseradish? Not so much). First Seder was our usual Seder at Aunt Judy and Uncle Lloyd’s house, made notable by Mikaela leading the Four Questions (in English) for the first time.

We hosted our usual small second Seder here at our house – just us, Grandma Marcia and Zaydie Larry (Grandma Sali helped us prepare while she was in town, but had to head back to be with Paca Steve for Passover), Uncle Matt, Aunt Sarah and cousins Ella and Samantha. The kids were great, considering they were being asked to sit through a much longer than usual dinner for the second night in a row. Mikaela took a regular turn reading parts of the Seder and led the younger kids to open the door for Elijah.