Zev Family Newsletter 2023

2023 started with both Marc and Jackie recovering from Covid.  Jackie caught it from co-workers at a year-end lunch and Marc caught it from Jackie.  Fortunately, both of us had mild cases and recovered completely without incident.  Even better, for the entire rest of the year we had no health issues or concerns.

For Jackie, the beginning of 2023 was filled with work and her usually volunteering, i.e., planning the Engineer’s Council banquet, helping with Sisterhood fundraisers and onegs, doing the newsletter and finances for AAUW SFV, and being treasurer for WRJ Pacific District.  Jackie’s term as treasurer of WRJ PD was up in March, and she was happy to turn over those responsibilities to someone else. 

Jackie’s term as WRJ PD Treasurer officially ended at the WRJ PD convention in Seattle the last weekend in March.  Our niece Samantha lives in Seattle with her boyfriend Pierce, and we have cousins Daniel and Isaac in Bellingham, so we turned the trip into a vacation.  When the convention ended, Marc flew up.  In a total coincidence, one of our friends (also Daniel) was vacationing in Seattle the same days that we were.  We went to the Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) and went hiking with our friend Daniel, went out to eat with Daniel and Isaac, and walked around the University of Washington campus and had dinner with Samantha and Pierce.  We also went to the Boeing Museum of Flight.  We highly recommend the Boeing Museum of Flight.  The WWI and WWII exhibits are really well done, and we loved going onto Air Force One and all the other planes they have accessible to the public.  We went to the Space Needle but didn’t go to the top.

April was full of family, as we had Passover at the beginning of the month and cousin Matthew’s marriage to Emma at the end.  It was a lovely ceremony, and it was great to see everyone. 

The highlight of the year was Georgia and Delaney’s wedding celebration in June.  We rented a four-bedroom B&B a couple of miles from their house and packed it full of people.  Jackie’s mom Sharon and Marc’s uncle Walter stayed with us, as did Jonathan and Emily, our cousin Abby, and her (and Georgia’s) friend Sam.  Fortunately, we were less than 15 minutes from the airport, because nobody’s flight came in at the same time as anyone else’s flight!  The wedding was at Georgia and Delaney’s Temple.  It started with a ketubah signing ceremony, and then we moved to the sanctuary for the wedding ceremony itself.  Afterwards, we went back to Georgia and Delaney’s house for a reception.  The whole day was just wonderful. 

We flew home the next day, but a week later, Jackie, Jonathan, and Emily flew to Mobile, Alabama for the National Square Dance convention.  We had an *adventure* getting there, which involved a detour to Waco, Texas because the plane couldn’t land in Dallas due to weather and then ran short on fuel, and a frantic drive to Dallas so that we could catch the last flight to Mobile.  Unfortunately, we drove to Dallas without our luggage because Waco, being a small airport, did not have the equipment to unload luggage from a plane the size of our plane (and it wasn’t all that big a plane!).  We made to Dallas in time to catch our flight to Mobile (with a whole 5 minutes to spare!) and then had to wait a day for our luggage to catch up.  Square Dancing was a ton of fun, as always, and we had some excellent meals.  Jackie’s favorite was the Bananas Foster French Toast, and the beignets, of course!  Jackie walked over to the Mardi Gras Museum and learned that Mardi Gras originated in Mobile, and that Mobile’s Mardi Gras is a very different affair from New Orleans’ Mardi Gras. 

The next month was Marc and Jackie’s trip to Dubai and Kenya.  A year earlier, friends of ours had gone on an African safari.  After listening to their stories and seeing their pictures, we signed up for the very same trip in 2023.  Rhona and Reid (Marc’s sister and her husband) and our friends Hazel and Paul (and their son Elan) decided to join us on the trip.  The trip was wonderful, and it was awesome to share it with Rhona and Reid and Hazel and Paul and Elan.  Jackie kept a journal on the trip which ran to 13 pages.  She tried to condense it for this newsletter and failed utterly.  If you would like to read about the trip, go to zev.la/news, and you can find her journal there.  We highly recommend the tour group (Brian Judd tours). 

We traveled twice more before the end of the year, both times to Detroit for funerals, unfortunately.  The first one was in September for Jackie’s Aunt Marjorie’s funeral, and the second was a month later for cousin Susan’s funeral.  At Aunt Marjorie’s funeral, her son Stuart gave a lovely eulogy.  Jackie read a poem she had written about her memories of Aunt Marjorie’s visits to Los Angeles.  At cousin Susan’s funeral, her son Ben talked about his mom, and we were all very impressed at how well he spoke. 

In December, Jackie and Marc went to a Murder Mystery dinner show with a group of friends (and about 70 other people we didn’t know). Over the course of the evening, several "murders" took place. We all had to mingle and "interrogate" the other "suspects." In the end, Marc won the evening by figuring out the most details of the crimes. While he will always cherish the T-shirt, shot glass, and other junk he received as a prize, he is most proud that several other people at the event thought *he* was the "murderer".

Funerals aside, life is good.  Jackie continues to work for Northrop Grumman and will hit her 30-year anniversary in January, with six years as a manager.  She continues to enjoy the technical work but is having increasing difficulty getting motivated to do the managerial work.  She does get lots of compliments on her management style though.  Marc continues to work for Accenture and will hit his two-year anniversary in April.  Accenture provides consulting services to other companies, so Marc has been on a series of contracts, and just started a new one.  Jonathan continues to work for Sequoia Research and his girlfriend Emily got promoted to assistant manager at her job.  Georgia continues to work for Tapestry (Boeing), but as an employee now (she was originally hired as a consultant).  Delaney continues teaching religious school at their Temple.

For the first half of the year, Marc was on the Board of a non-profit called Boundless Brilliance, but he has moved on, and is now volunteering for an organization called Reading to Kids.  He likes this work because it involves directly working with the kids.  He is hoping to do some creative fundraising in the coming year.  He is also looking into ways to volunteer for JQ International.

Wishing you all the best in the coming year!

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   ackie and Marc