Mikaela had her Jewish Community Center dance recital last week. She did a great job, tapping to “We Are Family” and doing ballet to a Star Wars medley. We were really proud of the great job she did dancing, especially since she’d been sick most of the week before the recital. We were sure that this would be her last year of dance, but when we told her that we thought this was her last recital, Mikaela asked why, and insisted that she wants to continue dancing next year.

Mikaela took a class from Theater of the Imagination. During the class, she and her classmates put together a show called “The Clones vs. The Hannahs”. Mikaela had a great time doing the class (their teacher called her a “natural”) and is looking forward to taking more of them in the future. Here’s the video of her show – it’s almost 13 minutes long.

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.

March was a busy birthday party month of Mikaela, and the last one (before mine) was a party at Zonker’s out at the Great Mall. Jonathan mostly spent that afternoon playing in the Great Mall indoor playground, but he eventually decided he wanted to try out the Zonker’s rides too. He rode the train several times, tried the banana planes (which he mostly liked, but didn’t want to try again), and tried the little roller coaster (which he HATED). Mikaela, as usual, had a blast, and capped the afternoon by getting her face painted.

We also got a taste of times to come with Mikaela’s schedule this month. Dance on Monday afternoon, Wednesday evening Theater, Thursday late-afternoon swimming. Add in a Daisies meeting and/or field trip and short work trips for me on back to back weeks, and I’m starting to think we need a family appointments secretary to keep up with it all.

Just before Passover, Jonathan introduced us to his pals, Soggy and Nat. Who are Soggy and Nat, you may ask? They are his right and left foot, respectively. Perhaps most interesting of all, we were informed that Soggy and Nat live in California. We let Jonathan know that they were welcome to stay for as long as they wanted to visit. Jon also added a new “friend” to his stuffed animal collection – a long-neck dinosaur that Jonathan dubbed “Cargo”. As you’ll learn in another post, Cargo is a remarkably spiritual stuffed animal.

In a remarkable bit of typecasting, Mikaela was asked to play the role of a mule in the first grade musical. She worked really hard learning her lines and all of the songs, and Miriam did a great job with Mikaela’s mule costume. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get close enough to get good video of the performance, but I did take a lot of pictures. Mikaela was terrific – unbeknownst to us, she developed a HILARIOUS “mule accent” in which to deliver her lines. She stole every scene she was in, and had a ball doing it. (And Miriam gets to look like a genius for signing Mikaela up for a theater class about a week before this show).

January was a fairly uneventful month. Since I managed to screw up and miss the sign-up deadline, Mikaela missed basketball season at the JCC this year (oops!). We did get to enjoy celebrating cousin Margo’s Bat Mitzvah, and the opportunities to see Cousin Annie, Aunt Mo, and Uncle Cor brought about by that occasion. Both Jonathan and Mikaela got to stay up late a the Bat Mitzvah party – they were having a blast and we couldn’t imagine trying to make them leave early. As it was, neither of them wanted to go at the end of the night.

January closed out with the Beth Torah Chili-Cook off. Mikaela helped – some with the making of the chili itself, more with the shtick behind the chili. The video linked above is what Mikaela refers to as her “cooking show,” where she described (basically) how to make my chili. Her video got rave reviews from Chili Cook-Off attendees – I had it set up and running on my MacBook right next to where I was serving samples of the chili. At the Cook-Off itself, both Mikaela and Jon spent most of their time playing games. We came home with two cakes and a plate of cookies froma the cake walk, and more small prizes and candy than a bad-weather Halloween haul, thanks to the “fishing” game that Jonathan did over and over and over again.

I know, I know – this is LONG overdue. But by way of catching up, December was a crazy month. Right after celebrating Jonathan’s birthday, Chanukah started, then it was Miriam’s birthday and the Winter Break from school. In the midst of all of that, we went through several weeks of the four of us taking turns being sick – bottom line is that blogging got pushed aside. I’m trying to get caught up today.

Chanukah was nice. We got to enjoy the full range of celebrations. We celebrated at home, with just the four of us. We did the annual big-family celebration at Rick & Teresa’s house. We invited our neighbors from across the street, the Alexanders, to join us for one night. And we concluded Chanukah at Grandma Marcia & Zaydie Larry’s house. While it was fun, it was also busy – it seemed we were always on the move.

Right in the middle of Chanukah, we also celebrated Miriam’s birthday. December featured a great snowstorm for sledding and playing in the snow. Oh, and a less-than-pleasant discovery that when wind blows snow sideways, it finds its way up into our house vents (and leaves water damage on nearby ceilings.

While Grandpa Steve and Grandma Sali were here, Mikaela and Jonathan discovered the magic that happens when you mix baking soda and vinegar – Jonathan calls it a “blocano”.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. We had the largest Thanksgiving Feast yet at Grandma Marcia and Zaydie Larry’s house – I believe the final count was 28. We were served by the biggest turkey yet too – a full 30 pounds of Thanksgiving bird. It was great that so many out-of-town-based relatives were able to join us – Grandma Sali and Grandpa Steve from Montana, Corey, Monique and Annie from Chicago, Steph from Springfield, and Jeff and Brandi from Houston. Both the food and the company were great!

Now, if the Jayhawks can just pull off a victory over the Tiggers this afternoon . . .

We buried Bubbie today. It’s been an incredibly emotional few days. The words and notes of support from family and friends have been wonderful. Jonathan doesn’t really understand what’s going on – just lots of people around and disruptions in his schedule (though getting to spend some fun time with Aunt Mo this afternoon was a treat). But Mikaela is struggling with all of this. At first, she just tried to ignore that Bubbie had died. She wanted to pretend that nothing different had happened, she even wanted to go to Sunday School on Sunday. But she left Sunday school about 15 minutes early, as the reality of it all hit her, at which point she also decided that she wanted to come to the funeral. After the funeral, Mikaela turned to Miriam and said, “I just want to go home and go over to Cannon’s house to play and forget all of this.”

All of the grandkids spoke at the funeral. Corey and Matt and Greg all spoke beautifully. I had an unusually difficult time figuring out what to say. You can read the full text of what I wrote after the jump.

continue reading "RIP Jean Rittmaster May 10, 1918 – November 14, 2009"