Last night started the Jewish holiday of Passover and we headed over to my parents’ house for a shortened and highly modified seder with four kids (two were mine and two were my newest cousins) and a good friend and an Uncle and an Aunt and grandparents and a lovely wife and me (of course). We read the four questions and I forced the youngest of the last generation (Uncle Roger) to read them with me (since I am the youngest who could read Hebrew). We talked about plagues and strange tasting wine. We ate two flavors of gefilte fish and I ended up with three pieces somehow (possibly due to a daughter’s questioning of the taste). Fun was had all around and lots of pictures were taken.
But the photo above is obviously not from our ordered meal (the president just couldn’t make it to our house this year). Starting in 2008, Obama has been attending Seders with his staff and in 2009 he began a new tradition of a traditional Passover meal in the White House. The New York Times has the full scoop, but the short version is: the President attends a seder not with dignitaries, but with all Jewish members of his staff and the first family (his daughters even read the four questions). The pic above is taken from the official White House Flickr feed. If you look closely at the Haggadahs in the hands of the attendees you will see a simple book that is actually the same one Mandy and I used for our small seder in New Jersey while living up there so I could work in Philadelphia after Katrina.
Happy Chag and Chag Sameach!

Wow, we got a big kid.

Other updates, looks like we are going to get that bump/horn on her head scanned. The shaped changed a month or so ago and the doc wants some more info on it. We’re aren’t worried and are sure it can be taken care of…

and finally…

Phone call from the wife on this subject ended with the following:

“ha ha ha… She grabbed the laundry basket filled with clean clothes and threw the clothes onto the floor. Then she dragged the basket over to me and got in it. Next she scream/pointed to ask me to drag the basket back to the pile of clothes with her in it. Now she is putting the clothes back into the basket with her… hee hee ha ha”

Flickr art for fun. Mandy and the baby have me drawing again, just a little and mostly in places the girl can add too, but drawing again. I’ll post art pics as I can here and on flickr. If you want to see all the family’s pics join flickr (free to join and easy if you’re already a yahoo member) and make me a friend. Email me or mandy with your username and we’ll give you access to the other 90% of our photostream that is always friends and family only.

This past Friday was Annabel’s first birthday. I took Thursday, Friday, and Monday off for an extended Baby Birthday Vacation and lots of family came in for the huge birthday celebration at the house on Saturday. Only my dad and Mandy’s brother Adam were unable to attend, but Adam will be in this weekend to see the baby and goto Voodoo Fest and Dad with get his own belated birthday time sometime soon. Anyway, her actual birthday was Friday (party was Saturday) and Mandy and I took the mostly walking little girl to City Park to play on the swings and the junglegyms and wander through Storyland. The day was beautiful and we all had lots of fun (especially Annabel when she got a birthday blueberry muffin). Be sure to check the Flickr feed now and in days to come for all the birthday pics you can handle. More details after Wednesday’s first year doctor’s checkup.

this is going home with us right?

Originally uploaded by schleifnet

This weekend the three of us went to the Louisiana Children’s Museum for a couple hours to play and look around. It was free due to a donation from Starbuck’s to pay for everyone who wanted to got for a sunday this month and last and next (November 2, 2008). We played in the baby room and got on the cutup streetcar (the same one I stood on for a commercial in the earlier nineties) and looked at the pretty colors (see above) and more.

The above pic is from brother in law Adam Devaney’s photostream on flickr. He is a volunteer firefighter in Surfside, TX and is working non-stop to help get the island back on its feet after Ike slammed into the community. In addition he is working hard to recover his business (he runs a beach home rental business that was in the midst of all kinds of neat stuff before the storm, Beach House Associates). Anyway, while he’s working hard over there the rest of us are thinking about him and all of the residents of the texas coast. Hopefully this recovery is smoother than ours has been.

Wanna see satelite pics of the entire effected area? Sure you do. NOAA put up pics after Katrina for new orleanians and they have done it again on the coast.