It was a busy fall mostly working on illustrations for another book. This one is about a dog – Munchie- and her adventures hunting around her yard. The illustrations are complete but it hasn’t been formatted yet. In the meantime here are a few examples: 

The week before Thanksgiving Denny and I went to St. Louis for our grandnephew’s Bar Mitzvah. David and Cindy joined us so we had lots of family to visit with after not seeing them for a long time.

Me, my brother Bob, my sisters Jane and Betty

Cousin Louise, me, Bob, Jane, Betty and cousin Judy

Denny, me Judy, Bob, Jane, her husband Jeff, Bob’s wife Lyn and Betty

Ben, the Bar Mitzvah young man, was terrific. Ben apparently loves theater and you could tell. He knew his Hebrew well and led us all in songs and prayer as well as speaking quite poignantly about loss and grieving. His aunt, our niece, had passed away suddenly in March. He also loves Dr. Strange so I painted this silk pillow for his gift.

We had arrived on Thursday and so did my sisters and brother in law. We all stayed at our cousin Judy’s place that night and Bob and Lyn brought dinner in. Bob’s son-in-law, Brad and his 3 children joined us, too. 

Friday before the main event we had time to see some friends from my high school days which was great fun. David and Cindy arrived Friday night while we were at temple and having dinner there. They picked us up afterwards and we all went to our other cousins Rich and Dallas’ house as they had more room for the 4 of us. 

Saturday morning was the Bar Mitzvah followed by lunch. The big party was Saturday night. When Ben was introduced he came out like Rocky waving his arms and running around giving high fives to all his friends. Fun night with a lot of dancing. 

On Sunday we went to Bob’s for brunch, then David, Cindy and I went to show Cindy some of St. Louis. Our first stop was the house that I grew up in and David remembers from his younger days visiting Grandma and Gramps. We even got the grand tour of the inside from the lovely couple who are living there now. Her mother just happens to be someone I went to Sunday school with and coincidentally just happened to stop by as we were about to leave! We then went around Forest Park and the zoo but didn’t see much as they closed less than an hour after we got there. We met Denny, Rich and Dallas on the way back to their house for BBQ dinner.

Monday we headed home. It was so nice to spend time with family on such a happy occasion.

On December 27^th we celebrated our 58^th anniversary. We had a delicious dinner courtesy of a gift from David of lobster tails and filet mignon from Omaha Steaks.

The next night we had dinner with friends. We found a restaurant that wasn’t too busy and was roomy so we could feel safe and ended up being almost the only people in the restaurant where we could sit by the fire. Good friends, good food and a really fun time.

There is a lot of illness around with this tri-pandemic. It seems to be never-ending. My hope for the new year is for good health, kindness, an end to wars, lots of pickleball and the orange guy in jail.

Take care of yourselves and others,

Peace