Just a quick update

So Pesah was really nice overall. We were in Toronto for the first days, where we spent the Hag with Ali's family. Most of her family is not observant, but her cousins have slowly become "frum" (I hate that word, by the way, but that should probably be a separate post all on its own) over the last couple of years. They also moved around a bit, from Edmonton to Calgary a number of years ago to Toronto about two years ago. So now they happen to be Halachically observant and settled not terribly far away from us, so we took advantage of our first real opportunity to spend a Yom Tov with Ali's close family.

We went to her distant cousins in Vegas for Succos and, while Ali is very close with them emotionally, and her grandmother joined us there, it wasn't quite like spending the Yom Tov with her family, but more like spending it with very close friends and some family.

This was the first time we were able to spend Yom Tov with her family that she grew up with. The Seder was virtually the same as it always was when she was little, including a lot of yelling and shouting and beating up one another. Most of the time everybody was laughing at something or someone or another. It was really a lot of fun. Also her cousins are all boys, from 24 down to 18, so it was a unique experience.

Oh, and I totally beat out Ali's attempt at Afikoman stealing. For months Ali was telling me that she was going to have her cousins gang up on me, like she was the queen and leader because she's the oldest. So I pulled a coup and stole the Afikoman from everyone, and held it hostage for a solid 20 minutes. I got everyone 30 bucks each. The next night Ali tried to do it the way she had planned and all we got out of it was 5 more bucks. Ali says it's because there were so many more people at the second Seder that she felt bad driving up the price. Please, who gonna believe?