Happy Birthday Emi December 2025 Part II

Saturday Dec 13

I slept until almost 6, yay. I didn’t run this morning and it was just as well, it was pretty cold for here, upper 30’s. It’s funny how it can be so cold in the morning but warms up nicely every afternoon. 

We called Sarah and the boys around 11 so they could see Emi open her present from them. They got her an American Girl baby doll and Emi loved it. She’s been playing with it off and on all day, loving it and abusing it by turns. Throwing baby on the floor: “o o baby fall down. Get up baby!”, putting baby to sleep, “night night baby. Baby WAKE UP! WAKE UP BABY!” We’re going to start working on waking people and babies up nicely.

We didn’t really let Emi play much with her presents yesterday but today she had a great time wearing her new dresses and playing with the trains, the scooter, and the doll. They were having another party today with a few of her friends from day care and swimming. The party theme was trains, as in “choo choo, Emi is two!”. Train paper plates, cups, stickers, table cloth, decorations. We mostly relaxed during the day, Craig and Jean picked up pizza, salad and pasta, and the cake, on their way here. I did blow up about 20 balloons and only felt a little light headed by the end.

We put some toys out in the backyard, bikes, scooter, etc.. Emi wanted to go play with them of course before the party started so we did. She practiced using her new scooter. It was the toddler version, with two wheels in the back to make balancing easier. At first she didn’t understand the concept but we kept working on it until she got it. One foot on the scooter, push with the other foot. Of course being at that particularly headstrong toddler stage she found plenty of other ways to misuse the scooter too.

She changed into her new pink princess dress for the party. One of her friends was sick and couldn’t come and the other took a long nap so they were a little late. The first family, parents and Hansl, was a friend from daycare. They were really good friends and played together really well for toddlers. Emi even shared, and didn’t declare “MINE” too much. The second family, parents and Elliot, and 7 week old Zoey (!) showed up late, just in time for pizza. They were friends from swimming. Elliot became very enamored with Emi’s new baby doll. He carried it around most of the evening and it took some serious negotiation to get him to agree to leave it here and go home to play with his OWN baby doll! 

Emi had a choo choo train cake and got to experience everyone singing happy birthday again and had another chance to blow out the candles on her cake.

Now tomorrow is the first light of hanukah and time for ANOTHER party, although this time it’s just us and Craig and Jean. I better practice the blessings before tomorrow night! I have latkes to make and jelly donuts to pick up too. Busy!

Sunday Dec 14

It was a little warmer this morning. I went for a 5 mile run. It went well. When I came back I took a shower and washed my hair. Then we just hung out and played with Emi. At 12:45 I drove to Palo Alto to pick up the sufganyot, the special jelly donuts for hanukah. I got them from Izzy’s Bagels. It was pretty crazy in there, lots of people picking up special orders for the first night of hanukah.

Then I headed to Trader Joes. I needed hash browns, lox, apple sauce and sour cream for the potato latkes. TD’s was a mad house! There were so many people in there, all looking for latke ingredients and other hanukah specialties. I saw one conservatively dressed woman buying dozens of packages of frozen latkes. I guess that’s one way to do it, but they’re really not that hard to make, especially if you buy hash browns instead of grating the potatoes yourself.

Then I needed pods for their nespresso machine, but Trader Joe's doesn’t carry those, so I went across the street to Safeway. Much quieter there, and I got a coffee from Starbucks too.

Back at their house I started gathering ingredients for latkes and discovered that there was only one egg left. Oops! Then Dan couldn’t find their menorah, so he ran out to Target for both items.

I started frying the pancakes as soon as he got back. I used a mixture of flour and bread crumbs. The New York Time's recipe called for baking powder so I added that to the pancakes too.

Craig and Jean showed up. They’d never celebrated Hannukah before so I gave them a brief summary of the story behind the holiday. And I used YouTube to help me sing the blessings correctly for once.

The latkes came out great. We almost ate them all but there were a few left. Emi ate the applesauce, all the croutons from the salad, and toward the end started trying the pancakes. And she licked the powdered sugar off her donut.

These jelly donuts were not as good as the ones in Minnesota last year. They were a little tough. I’m going to try a different place this year in Minnesota so I can get Kris a vegan donut. I hope it’s good!

Happy Birthday Emi December 2025

Thursday Dec 11

We’ve had a pretty peaceful uneventful day. It’s been snowing almost every day in Minnesota and it’s been pretty cold too so it wasn’t hard at all to tear ourselves away. My fingers have been so raw and cracked; I’m happy to leave just to give them a chance to heal. My only regret is leaving the dogs, mostly Harper. She’ll turn 16 while we’re in California (on the 14th) and I know our days with her are limited. She’s doing great for such an old dog but it can’t last forever.

We got to the airport plenty early. We parked in the ParknFly covered parking, so no worries about snow, and there was a bus right there waiting for us. Our flight was on time and everything went smoothly except when we got to San Francisco there was a plane at our gate. We waited about 15 minutes but then our pilot got impatient and asked the airport to find us a different gate, which they finally did. Then we had to wait awhile for our bags, so Dan had to circle for awhile. Finally, we were on our way to Los Altos.

As soon as we got there we said hi to everyone and then turned right around and left again. I needed some food and we needed wrapping paper, a card, and ribbon for Emi’s birthday tomorrow. We brought presents for Christmas too but we have a few days before we need to wrap them.

We got tacos at the Super Taco Truck. I read that the veggie ones were great and they really were. I gobbled them right up.

Back at the house we spent the rest of the afternoon playing with Emi and wrapping gifts. We had Chinese takeout for dinner and Emi ate a huge amount of rice and tofu. They had plain tofu for her, but she tried some of Dan’s mapatofu and decided she liked it so we put some sauce on her plain tofu and she ate a lot of that as well.

She is really a toddler now, talking up a storm, understanding even more, and of course does not like to be thwarted. She’ll get upset but can usually be redirected. She’s a lot of fun.

Friday Dec 12

Happy birthday Emi! I managed to sleep until almost 5. It was pretty chilly but once I had my breakfast and enough coffee I went ahead and ran, even thought it was still dark. I had thrown a headlamp in my suitcase at the last minute thinking this might be a good idea, so I would be finished running and could help with Emi right away. It was in the low 40’s and I could see my breath but it was still way better than zero and having to wear kahtoolas to make it through the snow.

When I got back everyone else was just getting up. It was only  7! I jumped in the shower and was ready to start the day.

We watched Emi most of the day, but gave each other breaks and helped with other stuff as well. Dan had made the cake for Emi’s birthday the night before, but he was making the family famous butter cream frosting and I’m good at it so I volunteered to make it. We had to run out and buy a hand mixer first, however! I just know that when mixing this frosting it's best to put the icing in a smaller bowl inside a bigger bowl containing ice cubes and you can’t do that with a stand mixer. The icing came out great, although I had to work to spread it on one of the layers. It wasn’t beautiful but it was delicious!

Lee  got us bahn mi sandwiches for lunch. He tried a new place and it was fine, but the bread left a lot to be desired. Around 1 we took Emi on a walk and she fell asleep right away. We stopped for coffee on the way back and she slept until after 2.

We spent the afternoon playing. Around 5 we headed to Palo Alto for dinner at Yayoi, the Japanese Katsu place. We met Craig and Jean there. They used to have online menus that I hated but they got rid of them and I was delighted! I was finally able to figure out what to order. I got a chicken Katsu dinner that was very good.

Emi ate and ate and ate. Agadashi tofu, dumplings, noodles. We finally had to drag her away because we still needed to go back to the house, eat the cake, sing happy birthday and open presents and it was getting late. She threw a fit when we finally made her stop eating!

In the car she started asking each of us to sing happy birthday. When she got to Kelsey, she hasn’t been feeling great and she was dozing so we told Emi that mama was sleeping, and Emi started yelling at the top of her lungs, “MAMA WAKE UP!!!!!” over and over! She wouldn’t stop and got quite upset. Toddlers! They want what they want, until you can finally distract them with something else.

Back at the house we sang happy birthday, blew out the two candles, and ate some cake and vanilla ice cream. It really did taste delicious. It’s one of my very favorite cakes.

Then Emi opened her presents. She got some great stuff, a little kid scooter from Craig and Jean. a brio train set from her mom and dad, a princess dress and magic wand from us, although I think she liked her card the best because it plays happy birthday when you open it!

Kansas City Reunion and Cleveland Wedding October 2025 - Part II

 I didn't take any pictures in Cleveland! Sorry!

Monday October 20

Back at the airport, heading home.

This little adventure hasn’t had a lot of downtime so it been hard to find time to write. But it’s been fun! It’s just if I wait too long I can’t remember everything interesting that happened.

We had two short flights yesterday morning to get to Cleveland. We flew Southwest; there just aren’t that many options between KC and Cleveland! We had one 40 minute flight to St Louis, a 40 minute wait, and then a 1 hour flight to Cleveland. Both flights were short enough that there wasn’t really time to do anything. My next crochet project is something called an Amish puzzle ball. It consists of a bunch of little stuffed wedges in different colors that fit together. I had time on each flight to do one part of two wedges and that’s all!

When we landed in CL it was gloomy and raining. Our Lyft driver was confused. We think he might have just started being a driver and his English was pretty marginal. He was having trouble driving and navigating at the same time! When we got to the hotel he stopped in the street across from the entrance and we had to show him where the driveway was so he could pull up.

It was only 11 AM and we felt very fortunate to be able to get an early checkin. We got settled and then went downstairs to get something to eat. Because of the rain we didn’t want to go out so we ate at the hotel and it wasn’t very good. We didn’t really care though.

Then we just went back to the room to rest and even sleep a little before it was time to get ready for the wedding. I put on my nifty black dress (from Nuuly of course), put on my jewelry and makeup, changed purses and put on the shoes and we were ready.

Downstairs in the lobby things were really hopping. There was a Browns football game about to end and people were starting to head home in their rain ponchos or partying in the lobby. It was very difficult to get a ride share! We finally got one, or so we thought, but the driver never not very close to the hotel. Finally Lee tried to call him. He answered, but hung up on Lee and then cancelled the ride! We were aghast! we had about 15 minutes to get to the wedding! It was too far to walk (and I wasn’t walking in those shoes). There was a taxi driver sitting in front of the hotel. We banged on his window and asked him to take us. He asked where it was (said he wasn’t going anywhere near the stadium) and agreed. Whew!

The wedding was in an old repurposed warehouse by the river. It was very cool with exposed brick walls. We were on time, but there wasn’t any time to spare! We found our seats, waved to Shirin, my cousin, and then it began.

It was a straight up Jewish wedding, very traditional. The bride’s family is Conservative (in-between Reform and Orthodox) so they did all the things. The bride and groom walked around each other 7 times, the bride wore a veil, there were traditional Hebrew prayers, songs and blessings. It was pretty great. I really don’t think I’ve ever been to a completely Jewish ceremony before, that I can remember. Almost all of my cousins (and us as well) married non-Jews so the weddings were a mixture of traditions and faiths. I enjoyed it and of course Lee cried.

After there were cocktails and snacks before dinner. I had a lavender gin fizz and Lee had a martini. I tried different snacks, they were all good!

We took our seats. We sat at the same table as David, Debbie, Shirin, and Robin. David and Debbie are the parents of the groom and Robin is David’s cousin on his dad’s side. That was pretty much everyone on the groom’s side of the family. Because of that I’m especially glad we went.

They did the first dance and the hora before dinner. People put a lot of energy into that hora, it got a little frenetic. They were hoisting the bride and groom in chairs and bouncing the chairs up and down. I’m glad they didn’t drop anyone!

Dinner was good, much better than the usual wedding fare. The shorts ribs were especially delicious. I ate some of Lee’s and I wish I had gotten it too, but I got the salmon.

After the toasts and a little dessert the band started to play. It was good but really loud and we opted to bow out at that point. We couldn’t hear and we were pretty tired.

Fortunately we got a ride back to the hotel without any trouble! I guess the football game was over and things were calming down.

I slept until almost 6 this morning. It wasn’t raining anymore but I opted not to work out. I was tired and ready to relax a little. Lee went downstairs and got us some coffee and me a sweet roll and we just hung out in the hotel room. We were going to a brunch at the bride’s parent’s house at 10 am.

Our driver to their house was a 80 year old grandma. She was a hoot, and a perfectly good driver too. We talked to her the entire ride, about grandkids, cremation, the odd things that happen when people die, you name it. It was a great ride.

We were the first ones from David’s side of the family to show up. I got myself some food and settled down, listening to conversations around me and enjoying the antics of a couple of babies and toddlers in attendance. Eventually we settled in a corner with Jon, the groom, and Barry Posen and his wife. Barry is David’s best friend since pre-school, so he seems like part of the family. 

We talked about getting German citizenship and our feelings about that. I’ve got all the paperwork but I haven’t really gotten started yet. And we talked about the various stories we know about how my mother’s family left Germany. It’s funny how the basic facts we know are the same but some of the details are different. And when Shirin came we talked about the different pieces of what we knew about our mothers coming over from Germany, and different memories we have from growing up. It really made me feel like our parents were still around, and maybe they are, in a way.

At around one thirty we said our goodbyes and took another Uber back downtown to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That is such a great museum. I think we both really enjoyed it. There are so many short videos and almost every single one would suck me in. I would finally tear myself away, afraid that if I didn’t keep moving I would run out of time.  But we were finished after about an hour and a half.

We walked downtown and went to a Vietnamese restaurant. We split a Pho and a Bahn Mi and they were both very good. Then we walked back to the hotel, grabbed our bags and headed to the airport. And here we are. This has been a very nice vacation, but I’m tired. I’m ready to not go anywhere for a while, at least until Emi’s birthday!

Kansas City Reunion and Cleveland Wedding October 2025 - Part I

Kirby, Emi and Her Cast, Leo Behind the Curtain

                                                

We’ve been here since Thursday evening but there hasn’t been a good time to sit down and write. But here I am, Saturday morning at Mark and Mary’s new house in KC. The younger generation is heading to the zoo. The old fogies and just hanging out, at least for a while. Later some people are going to the No Kings protest. At one point I considered it but my heart just isn’t in it. I don’t even want to talk about it. I’m just not optimistic about where we are heading and I don’t think a protest, even a great big one, is going to make any difference.

Ok, never mind. We dropped the dog’s off at Rita’s Thursday morning and headed to the airport around 11. Our flight took off right on time. It was short compared to going to California, only a little over an hour. Much to our surprise Kansas City has a brand new airport. Their old airport was pretty nice at the time. Their new airport is REALLY nice. And the signage was great. No problem finding the shuttle to the rental cars, or finding our way out of the airport.

Our Airbnb is very nice, for a change. It even has a pool although we didn’t pay to have it heated and it was pretty cold. It was fairly warm here, however, so the kids enjoyed it.

We are staying with Sarah, Eric, Leo, Kirby, Dan, Kelsey and Emi. Emi broke her leg a few weeks ago but she’s being a very good sport about it. She’s starting to walk on it, which she’s not supposed to do, but it’s hard to keep a 2 yo down for long. She only has to wear it for a few more weeks. Little kids heal fast! Anyway we’ve all learned something; you’re not supposed to take your kids down a slide in your lap. I mean everyone has done that at one time or another. Daniel feels terrible but who knew?

Lee sent Sarah and I to get carry out at French Market. He had been there before and said it was great, but initially we didn’t understand how it worked. When we got there however it all made sense. There were lots of premade dishes and we picked out 3 pastas, 2 green beans, 1 meat dish, 2 salads, a charcuterie plate and some crostinis. We had just the right amount of everything except too many green beans and salad, and not enough crostini. The boys basically ate the charcuterie plate for dinner! Oh and some very good chocolate chip cookies!

In the morning I work up too early, darn it, 4:30 am. I stayed in bed until after 5 but then I got up. Once it was light I went for a run. There was a great park, Meadowlark, very close to the house, and I ran around there. It’s so much warmer here than in Minnesota, highs in the 80’s yesterday, and pretty humid.

We headed to Mark and Mary’s as soon as I was finished with running and had cooled off and taken my shower. We basically spent the entire day at their house visiting with everyone, which meant Cathy, JA, Kate and Erik and their 4 kids, Andrew, Calina and their 2 kids, Elsa, Sam and Blake and Elsa and Sam’s kid too. We had a great time! Their house is beautiful and spacious with lots of good places to sit and relax, both inside and outside. There were big swings hanging from trees and lots of places for the kids to run around as well.

Around 2 pm Cathy went and brought Joanne over. She’s almost 95 yo and has had some health issues in the past year, plus moving to Kansas City has also been stressful. But I think she really enjoyed seeing everyone and just hanging out with us. She stayed until around 6 pm, so a long time. It was really great to see her.

We had bbq for dinner. Mary bought a LOT of bbq, nobody went hungry! And she had also bought a carrot cake and a chocolate cake. There even was some cake left!

We went back to the Airbnb around 7. I went to bed around 9 and slept a lot better, until almost 6 am. Leo and Kirby got up a little before 7. There were in their room fussing with each other so I said why don’t you just get up and come cuddle with me on the couch. Leo looked at the clock and said, it’s 6:58, we can’t get up until 7! They literally would not leave the room until the clock said 7! Well trained kids, at least sometimes!

Soon Emi was up as well. Kirby picked up Go Dog Go and started reading it. He’s only 5, and that’s a second grade level book! He needed help sometimes, but he read a lot of it all by himself! He was very persistent too. Once he started that book he would not stop until he finished it! I was impressed. And Emi was a little enchanted. Periodically she would come over and announce Kirby Dog Go!

After a while Lee and I headed to Mark and Mary’s. Sarah, Daniel and fam went to the KC zoo with Kate and Elsa’s families. At first just me, Lee, Cathy, JA, Mark and Mary were at their house. Around 1 everyone except Lee and I went to the No Kings protest. In spite of my negativity I was heartened to see how many people showed up. I wish I thought it would matter.

Lee went to get Joanne. And soon Ann Schnell showed up as well! It was great seeing her, I think I hadn’t seen her seen Dan and Kelsey’s wedding. She has been doing a lot of traveling and stays very busy staying active in Fayette community affairs.

Joanne, Emi and Daniel

                                    

Eventually the younger generation returned. They said the zoo was great, but the kids were pretty wiped out; it involved a lot of walking. Leo and Kirby went in the other room to rest for a bit but they eventually joined the other kids swinging outside.

Suddenly a rainstorm blew through. It didn’t last long, but it rained hard. It drove everyone inside, at least for a while. It was getting close to dinnertime anyway. Mary tried another place where she was able to buy large pre-made pastas - lasagna, spaghetti, mac and cheese, and salads. They had to cook for various times so I worked out when each one should go in. Only thing was because we had so many of these big containers in her oven at the same time we probably could have cooked some of them longer. But they were all very good.

Sunday October 19.

Eventually it was time for Lee and I to head to the airport. We have a very early flight so we stayed at the airport Marriott last night. First we dropped Joanne off at her apartment. Then we headed to the hotel to check in. I took the bags up to the room while Lee returned the rental car. Before too long we were in bed.

I had my alarm set for 3:30 AM, but I was up by 3. I was a little nervous about just getting up and heading right out the door, so I didn’t mind having a little extra time to drink a cup of coffee and eat a little something. But we were ready to catch the shuttle to the airport by 4:15 and at the airport by 4:30.

Of course the airport was buzzing. You wouldn’t think it would be that early but there are always a lot of flights scheduled first thing in the morning.

Now we’re sitting at our gate, about to embark on part 2 of this adventure!