Holiday, family
The last week was full of family stuff. Well, you know, passover and all.
The Seder was great - it was supposed to be just us this year with Netalie and Hadar, but about three days before my aunt called my mom and said her son and his wife decided to have the Seder at their house because the little twins (who were born a month ago) shouldn't be outside (forgive me for bullshitting that), so they'll have the wife's family over, but not my aunt's... So yeah, they came over without Asaf, the eldest son who's wife is a bitch and it made a whole lot of difference - Asaf is the leader in the "No-reading-of-the-Hagada-movement", and without him we went through it quickly and with lots of laughs, and a lot of singing (and after a point, drunk singing). Everyone were in high spirits and the food was great, so it was a great night (unfortunately Netalie and Hadar didn't make it in the end, but next time).
And so begins a week long of Matzebra (so many different names for that dish, so allow me to explain) - basically passover's pancake - you break a matza into little pieces, mix it with warm water, milk and egg and fry it on a pan. It's my dad's time to shine since he's the Matzebra maker at home (he can't cook anything else for the life of him). I tried to make one for myself one day and it turned out horrible, so dad will be in charge of it from now until forever...
Friday was meant to go to my aunt and uncles (other side), and boy was that fun.
My dad has two siblings - Dassie, who lives in California with her husband Chuck (they have three adult kids) and Rafi, who lives with his wife Yoela about 30 minutes drive from us (they also have three adult kids, two with families). Yoela had two sisters - Zvia, who died a year ago and Orit. Zvia had two kids from her first husband, divorced, married Nissim, divorced him as well but not before the kids grew to treat him as a father (and they still do - call him dad and treat him like they don't have some loser of a biological father somewhere in the world) and like I said died a year ago from cancer. Her two kids live abroad with their families - Lilach with her husband Julian and their daughter Shachar (16.5 years old) in England and Shaul with his wife and kids in South Africa (I think). Orit has two kids, Yuval and Ayelet, both in their twenties. I get along very well with all of Yoela's relatives, better than I do with some of my own cousins.
So Shachar, who is my cousin's second cousin once removed was about 9 when I last saw her, and I was amazed to see her this time. She's a real sweetheart - funny and smiley (reminds me a lot of myself), and we immediately clicked. She spent some time talking with me and she sat next to us when we played cards (oh, the cards! Both me and Ayelet really like this one game but we usually have a hard time convincing people to play with us - this time not only did we have abundance of players but my uncle Rafi actually made us stay and have another game with him since he didn't play the first game - I was lucky my mom was in no hurry to go home - since I won both games which was awesome). Both Udi and I explained to her some of the moves and we had a great time (my dad was our secretary, and he recruited both my cousin's little kids to help with the math. They ended up riding his head, literally, and he was having the time of his life).
Since the guys were coming over to play football on Sunday I tagged along and sat with Shachar for two hours mocking the players (she mocked her dad quite a lot). Lilach, her mom, who's a really cool broad, sat with us some and gave me the thumbs up when I was teaching swearwords in Hebrew to Shachar (I don't get it - I have more genes in common with this girl than I do with actual people I'm related to). The conversation went to food somehow, and she mentioned she had sushi for the first time that day - but it was veggie sushi, and in Rehovot (very hard to find good sushi outside Tel Aviv and Herzliya) so I volunteered to take her out to have real sushi today.
Picked her up at 7 and we made it in good time to Tel Aviv and we headed for Moon, which was a great choice. She was a real good sport - she let me pick all the dishes ("Do you trust me?" I asked her, and she dove right in) and ha all of them, not just nibble at the edge, and enjoyed everything, even the shrimp. We both declared the experiment a huge success and I told her next time they'll be in Israel I'll take her to have some good ice cream. Lilach told me she had no idea if Shachar would want to come over during the summer, but she told me today they booked their tickets and she looked excited about it, so yey.
I am also going to introduce her to Tori Amos. She's just the right age to grow into this kind of music.
I seem to have adopted a little sister. :)
The Seder was great - it was supposed to be just us this year with Netalie and Hadar, but about three days before my aunt called my mom and said her son and his wife decided to have the Seder at their house because the little twins (who were born a month ago) shouldn't be outside (forgive me for bullshitting that), so they'll have the wife's family over, but not my aunt's... So yeah, they came over without Asaf, the eldest son who's wife is a bitch and it made a whole lot of difference - Asaf is the leader in the "No-reading-of-the-Hagada-movement", and without him we went through it quickly and with lots of laughs, and a lot of singing (and after a point, drunk singing). Everyone were in high spirits and the food was great, so it was a great night (unfortunately Netalie and Hadar didn't make it in the end, but next time).
And so begins a week long of Matzebra (so many different names for that dish, so allow me to explain) - basically passover's pancake - you break a matza into little pieces, mix it with warm water, milk and egg and fry it on a pan. It's my dad's time to shine since he's the Matzebra maker at home (he can't cook anything else for the life of him). I tried to make one for myself one day and it turned out horrible, so dad will be in charge of it from now until forever...
Friday was meant to go to my aunt and uncles (other side), and boy was that fun.
My dad has two siblings - Dassie, who lives in California with her husband Chuck (they have three adult kids) and Rafi, who lives with his wife Yoela about 30 minutes drive from us (they also have three adult kids, two with families). Yoela had two sisters - Zvia, who died a year ago and Orit. Zvia had two kids from her first husband, divorced, married Nissim, divorced him as well but not before the kids grew to treat him as a father (and they still do - call him dad and treat him like they don't have some loser of a biological father somewhere in the world) and like I said died a year ago from cancer. Her two kids live abroad with their families - Lilach with her husband Julian and their daughter Shachar (16.5 years old) in England and Shaul with his wife and kids in South Africa (I think). Orit has two kids, Yuval and Ayelet, both in their twenties. I get along very well with all of Yoela's relatives, better than I do with some of my own cousins.
So Shachar, who is my cousin's second cousin once removed was about 9 when I last saw her, and I was amazed to see her this time. She's a real sweetheart - funny and smiley (reminds me a lot of myself), and we immediately clicked. She spent some time talking with me and she sat next to us when we played cards (oh, the cards! Both me and Ayelet really like this one game but we usually have a hard time convincing people to play with us - this time not only did we have abundance of players but my uncle Rafi actually made us stay and have another game with him since he didn't play the first game - I was lucky my mom was in no hurry to go home - since I won both games which was awesome). Both Udi and I explained to her some of the moves and we had a great time (my dad was our secretary, and he recruited both my cousin's little kids to help with the math. They ended up riding his head, literally, and he was having the time of his life).
Since the guys were coming over to play football on Sunday I tagged along and sat with Shachar for two hours mocking the players (she mocked her dad quite a lot). Lilach, her mom, who's a really cool broad, sat with us some and gave me the thumbs up when I was teaching swearwords in Hebrew to Shachar (I don't get it - I have more genes in common with this girl than I do with actual people I'm related to). The conversation went to food somehow, and she mentioned she had sushi for the first time that day - but it was veggie sushi, and in Rehovot (very hard to find good sushi outside Tel Aviv and Herzliya) so I volunteered to take her out to have real sushi today.
Picked her up at 7 and we made it in good time to Tel Aviv and we headed for Moon, which was a great choice. She was a real good sport - she let me pick all the dishes ("Do you trust me?" I asked her, and she dove right in) and ha all of them, not just nibble at the edge, and enjoyed everything, even the shrimp. We both declared the experiment a huge success and I told her next time they'll be in Israel I'll take her to have some good ice cream. Lilach told me she had no idea if Shachar would want to come over during the summer, but she told me today they booked their tickets and she looked excited about it, so yey.
I am also going to introduce her to Tori Amos. She's just the right age to grow into this kind of music.
I seem to have adopted a little sister. :)