STORAGE

Today is the day. Our lease is up and we are moving all of possessions into a 10 x 15 storage unit. So now I better put my type A behavior away because we are not going to be able to find anything for the next 9 months or so. I thought I'd be able to have everything lined up just so, but if you looked around our apartment this morning, you'd see that is definitely not the case. I'm going to go ahead and contribute this madness to the massive amount of traveling we've been doing.
We were just in North Carolina this weekend visiting Brevard. We saw some great concerts and Steven had a chance to catch up with a lot of friends.
The minute we land in Omaha, we'll be go, go, go. Our nephew's birthday party is on Thursday and Friday. Steven is playing at church on Sunday. We might do some light 4th of July traveling. We are going to Door County, WI to the Midsummer Music Festival to hear a friend the following weekend. Are you seeing a trend here? It's ridiculous, but also really fun. And probably the only time we'll be able to live like this and maybe the only time we'll want to.
So now I sign off from my last post written in beautiful apt 6B at the Copley. It's been a joy to live here (and you'd totally agree if you visited me at my first place in NYC). I will miss it greatly, but it's time for the next chapter to begin.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Charlie King and I made our way into the Cleveland Plain Dealer after a little shopping excursion to the new Lego store at the mall. We were picking out his present for being our ring bearer. Check out the article HERE

Long Island Bat Mitzvah

I attended my first true Long Island Bat Mitzvah yesterday and boy was it a memorable experience. The woman of honor was Stefani, Steven's best man's sister.

It was held at the beautiful Swan Club.

Here's a little taste of cocktail hour before the kids arrived. 

And now we've moved into the larger room and the tweens have arrived. There were dancers hired to keep things hopping on the dance floor. There was also a photo station where you could pick from a bunch of different backgrounds and have a photo done. It was a really fun day.

For those of your who, like me only a year ago, don't know what a bar or bat mitzvah is. Here's your answer:

Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah are Jewish coming of age rituals. According to Jewish law, when Jewish children reach 13 years of age, they become responsible for their actions, and "become a Bar or Bat Mitzvah".

The Bar Mitzvah ceremony involves the young man or woman being called to read the Torah, a Haftarah portion, or both at a Shabbat or other service (Thursday morning, Monday morning or a festival) when the Torah is read, and it may also involve giving ad'var Torah, a discussion of that week's Torah portion.

Tennis racquet pasta in honor of Wimbledon. Let's go Federer!!

Tempe, Arizona - Grady Gammage Auditorium

designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. His last commission. 

Salt Lake City

At the Capitol Theater in Salt Lake City each show that comes through paints their logo on the wall and then the cast, crew, and musicians sign it. It look pretty cool, so I took some pictures. Here's Steven signing it.

 and here's my new signature! For everyone's information, I am now legally Jill Bartels Cohen. I ditched my normal middle name in favor of keeping my maiden name.

Belated Paris post

A little video from our time at the Eifel Tower

Family History

I've spent the past 2 days doing a little research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. One of the Mormons missions is to preserve, research, and maintain genealogical records. They have vast library here in Salt Lake as well as a huge storage facility for records kept on microfilm. Steven and I started off working with 2 guides. Everyone is assigned a guide free of charge to help get them started in their research. I spent 2 hours working with my guide and learning the best ways to go about using the resources that exist.
Today I was able to find my great grandparents marriage certificate from the files. I had to look through several years of marriage certificates in Bremer County, Iowa, but I now have this very cool scanned image. It's just amazing the things we were both able to come up with.