I hope everyone had a wonderful Pesach!  Ours was so, so nice.  I think it gets nicer every year.

Firstly, it was so special to have ds17 and dd16 home with us again.  I already commented about that but it adds so much when everyone is home at the same time.  The sedarim were great – I was feeling sad that next year we’ll only have one seder (since that’s what is done is Israel).  I’m at the point now when many things we are doing is the last time we’re doing it in America, and that’s a mixed feeling – though we’re all looking forward to our move, our present lives are very pleasant and it’s not easy making such a big change and knowing that this stage of our lives is coming to a close. 

On chol hamoed, we took the kids to a state park that had a baseball field and a huge playground.  We ended up spending almost all the time at the baseball field – we had enough people for a family baseball game, which was really fun!  I didn’t play until the end, and when I got up, I was jokingly warning ds17, who was pitching to me, about the home run I was going to hit.  He was joking back to me about his confidence in my hitting ability (since I was swinging and not connecting with the ball), when I caught him offguard by hitting it hard directly at him – it was a good thing he has fast enough reflexes that he deflected it from directly hitting him!   And I did later hit a home run, though that might partially be since no one was fielding at the time!  😛

Then on Friday, my sister came for a good part of the day with her two children.  As soon as I made dd16’s ticket to come home, I called my sister and told her that dd and ds were going to be here for Pesach, and it would be her last chance to see all of us before we moved to Israel.  I asked her if there was any way she could come visit.  Her schedule is SO busy – I don’t know how she does all she does.  Busyness is why we’ve only seen each other twice in the last four years – now 3 times, with this visit – though we both would love it if it were more frequent.  My sister is so great!  She really made it happen, and I’m so appreciative to her for putting in the time and money to make the trip; I know it wasn’t easy.  Our kids love seeing their cousins, and their cousins love seeing them.  It was close to my nephew’s birthday, so dd16 made him a cake and we sang him the three stanzas of Happy Birthday, as we always do. My sister said it was the first time she ever heard the full rendition!   It was really hard to say goodbye.  It’s that mixed feeling that I told you about.

Throughout all of Pesach we had a nice mix of guests and family, and it was so relaxing to have a week without all the non-stop planning and paperwork and appointments that I’ve been busy with.  Funny, usually Pesach feels like never ending meal preparation and clean up, but compared to what I’ve been doing lately, it was a major vacation.

Tonight we turned the kitchen back over, and as we did that, I started feeling the ‘time to get back to real life’ feeling.  It didn’t take long for my ‘to do’ list for tomorrow to fill a page.  It makes me appreciate even more how nice it’s been not having a pressing list of things to do for this past week!

Avivah