Han’s Hebrew Naming Ceremony Weekend: August 2015
What a week(end)! We planned a Hebrew Naming Ceremony for Han, and luckily we were able to have GiGi and Grandpa and MiMi and Papa come out and visit for it. GiGi and Grandpa came out a few days early to spend the last few weekdays of summer vacation with the kids. There were a lot of arts and crafts, making fairy houses outdoor in the garden, baking and even a trip to the zoo. On Saturday, Brynn’s classmate Charlotte had a birthday party at Vetta (lots of fun inflatable things to bounce on), and Han and Esme were invited too. Then Mimi and Papa arrived and we all went over to neighbor Gary’s for some fun in the pool (well, some in the pool, some watching). After dinner and ice cream it was back to the house to prep for the naming ceremony on Sunday morning.
Just like we did for Esme and Brynn, we picked out a Hebrew name for Han — Nachshon Yafeh. We wanted something starting with an “N” to link up with Han’s Chinese name — Nuo Sen. There aren’t a whole lot of Hebrew names starting with N but this seemed like a good fit. As Wikipedia explains, “Nahshon was, according to a Jewish Midrash, the person who initiated the Hebrews’ Passage of the Red Sea, by walking in head-deep until the sea parted. The popular Yiddish saying “to be a Nachshon” means to initiate something.” Sounds fitting, given his desire to dive head-first into things (both literally and figuratively). Yafeh is Hebrew for “beautiful” which matches up with Esme and Brynn’s Hebrew names — Yafah and Hadar — which mean the same.
The ceremony was great, though we think Han was giddy over all the attention because he wouldn’t sit still — by the end literally he was crawling over all the kids on the floor. We were so glad to have the grandparents and so many friends to join us for the celebration.
The visit was capped off by Brynn and Han’s first day of school on Monday morning, and soon things were back to “normal” again — or at least as normal as they can be.
There are ~475 pictures and videos from the weekend, and they all can’t be displayed here (just the first 200 or so). To see them all, go to the SmugMug gallery where you can also download the photos or order prints.
[smugmug url=”https://hinyard-lash.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=51486895_NRqcR9&format=rss200″ imagecount=”200″ start=”1″ num=”200″ thumbsize=”Th” link=”lightbox” captions=”false” sort=”false” window=”false” smugmug=”false” size=”L”]