Overdue update!
Overdue update
I never posted about Thanksgiving like I meant to. It was a bit weird this year. On Thanksgiving morning we got a call informing us that my great-aunt Lil, the wife of my grandmother's brother Joe, had passed away during the night. She was pretty old and had been frail for quite a while, so it was no enormous surprise and indeed a bit of a relief in some ways -- particularly, at least she didn't die after Joe had left to come here for Thanksgiving, right? He already felt guilty enough about leaving her behind.
Anyway, so it meant that our Thanksgiving dinner had three fewer people than expected, because of course Joe didn't come, and neither did his son and daughter-in-law. Of course, we still ended up with like a dozen people at the table, and it went pretty well overall. There was a decent amount of vegetarian food and Isaac even tasted several things he had never tried before, including the vegetarian lasagna that a cousin made, which he liked enough to ask for seconds. Have I mentioned lately that Isaac is finally coming out of picky-little-kid mode and showing more and more interest in trying new foods? I am really pleased about that. Of course, all Ruthie would eat was bread *roll eyes* but whatever....
Before the meal, while we were hanging out at mom's house, mom realized that the cousins who were now not coming, were the ones who were supposed to bring dessert. So mom whipped up some brownies and I whipped up some cookies while Isaac watched the football game, heh.
Anyway, so it wasn't the Thanksgiving we were expecting, but what can you say. As the relatives of my grandmother's generation are dying off, so are the last vestiges of the Thanksgiving traditions that I've loved for so long. It's time to start forging some new ones, then.
Speaking of new traditions, I decided to celebrate Hanukkah a little more this year than we have in the past. We have a beautiful menorah that my mom gave me a while back, so we lit the candles together every night (except the night we were at Brian's, which I'll get to in a moment), and we played a bit of dreidel, and my idea was that on each night we'd read a special story -- I had gotten a book of Hanukkah stories, with eight stories in the book (one for each night), but as it turned out the stories were a little too advanced for the kids so I gave up on that after the first couple of nights. Oh well, it was a nice idea anyway.
I also decided to give the kids one gift on the last night of Hanukkah, instead of one for each night (because we're also going to be exchanging gifts on Xmas and that would just be too much). So I gave them jointly a DVD of Billy Jonas singing his songs. We love Billy Jonas, and recently got to see him perform live, so the kids have enjoyed the CD, although some of it is hokey. Ruthie got a big pleasant surprise when we discovered that he does a cover of "Rockin' Robin" on the DVD -- she loves that song! :)
And now it's December and things are getting very busy. Last weekend we went to a Christmas caroling event in Boston with 3,000 other people (see story here) and a birthday party. This weekend we have my brother Metafrantic's birthday dinner, then our chorus concert on Sunday. Next weekend we have another chorus event, and then it's Xmas! ZOMG! What happened to my year???
I never posted about Thanksgiving like I meant to. It was a bit weird this year. On Thanksgiving morning we got a call informing us that my great-aunt Lil, the wife of my grandmother's brother Joe, had passed away during the night. She was pretty old and had been frail for quite a while, so it was no enormous surprise and indeed a bit of a relief in some ways -- particularly, at least she didn't die after Joe had left to come here for Thanksgiving, right? He already felt guilty enough about leaving her behind.
Anyway, so it meant that our Thanksgiving dinner had three fewer people than expected, because of course Joe didn't come, and neither did his son and daughter-in-law. Of course, we still ended up with like a dozen people at the table, and it went pretty well overall. There was a decent amount of vegetarian food and Isaac even tasted several things he had never tried before, including the vegetarian lasagna that a cousin made, which he liked enough to ask for seconds. Have I mentioned lately that Isaac is finally coming out of picky-little-kid mode and showing more and more interest in trying new foods? I am really pleased about that. Of course, all Ruthie would eat was bread *roll eyes* but whatever....
Before the meal, while we were hanging out at mom's house, mom realized that the cousins who were now not coming, were the ones who were supposed to bring dessert. So mom whipped up some brownies and I whipped up some cookies while Isaac watched the football game, heh.
Anyway, so it wasn't the Thanksgiving we were expecting, but what can you say. As the relatives of my grandmother's generation are dying off, so are the last vestiges of the Thanksgiving traditions that I've loved for so long. It's time to start forging some new ones, then.
Speaking of new traditions, I decided to celebrate Hanukkah a little more this year than we have in the past. We have a beautiful menorah that my mom gave me a while back, so we lit the candles together every night (except the night we were at Brian's, which I'll get to in a moment), and we played a bit of dreidel, and my idea was that on each night we'd read a special story -- I had gotten a book of Hanukkah stories, with eight stories in the book (one for each night), but as it turned out the stories were a little too advanced for the kids so I gave up on that after the first couple of nights. Oh well, it was a nice idea anyway.
I also decided to give the kids one gift on the last night of Hanukkah, instead of one for each night (because we're also going to be exchanging gifts on Xmas and that would just be too much). So I gave them jointly a DVD of Billy Jonas singing his songs. We love Billy Jonas, and recently got to see him perform live, so the kids have enjoyed the CD, although some of it is hokey. Ruthie got a big pleasant surprise when we discovered that he does a cover of "Rockin' Robin" on the DVD -- she loves that song! :)
And now it's December and things are getting very busy. Last weekend we went to a Christmas caroling event in Boston with 3,000 other people (see story here) and a birthday party. This weekend we have my brother Metafrantic's birthday dinner, then our chorus concert on Sunday. Next weekend we have another chorus event, and then it's Xmas! ZOMG! What happened to my year???