We left Saturday morning. We were driving to Connecticut, to Aunt Bette's house, bringing Arno and Dorit in the car. The Passover gathering didn't start until 5pm, but we wanted to drive during Tess's naptime, so we set out around 11:30. We picked up Arno and Dorit and the five of us drove up to New Haven in the rain. We then had about three hours to kill in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. (This is not an easy task with a two-year old.) But when that was over we all got dressed up and drove to Aunt Bette's house.
There were about twenty people in attendance this year. Bette, Lenny, and David are the Grossman siblings. Bette's son, his three kids, and wife were there. Len's family (us) were there. And David, Phyllis, their son and new daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law's parents and brother were there. (Plus Arno and Dorit, of course)
We ate and socialized for about an hour, during which time Tess slowly came out of her shell. She was completely overwhelmed by the crowd at first, hardly interested in her many presents because of her fear. Then about an hour into the evening, I saw her running from one room to the next, with a big grin on her face and her extroverted self in full bloom.
"Are you not shy anymore?" I asked her.
"No, mama. I not shy." she told me, and then she ran off to rejoin some game she with a new relative.
At 6:30, I told the Exodus story, and did quite well. Then David led everyone in a reading of a Haggadah that was mercifully short. We were eating around 7:30. Matzah ball soup, pot roast, asparagus, roasted chicken, stuffed tomatoes, bean salad, and more. We finished off the Haggadah around 9 or 9:30, ate a huge dessert spread, and then took our very tired baby back to the hotel at 10:30pm.
The next morning we woke up at the very late hour (for us) of 7am. We then took turns walking Tess around the parking lot until we could finally return to Bette's at 10am. Bette served a huge brunch, and we all ate and talked until noon when most everybody left. We left at 1am to drive back to the city.
We had been planning to stop by Paul's house in the evening. We thought he was having a 2pm Easter brunch with his family, and we hoped to drop in after the meal and say hello. But when we called to confirm our plans, we learned that they weren't eating until 4:30 or so. The invited us to join them, and so we ended up going straight to Paul's house, arriving at 3:30, and then eating a huge Easter dinner feast with them at 5. Tess loved being at Paul's house at first, when it was just Amy and Paul, but she was a little overwhelmed when five more guests arrived. She warmed up by dinnertime, though.
After dinner we took a walk to the park, got caught in the rain on the way home, and then finally dragged our exhausted selves home at 8pm.
Here's Tess's Passover dress. I was hoping to get a better shot of it at Bette's. :(
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