We celebrated Simon’s Bar Mitzvah last weekend and it was a really nice time. While we can’t take photos during the actual service, you can see the pictures I took while he was practicing here. We had 23 guests from out of town, so most of these pictures are from our time with them!
Simon made a logo for his Bar Mitzvah using the BMW logo and changing the initials to his own. He did this because he likes cars, and he chose BMW because it has three letters like his initials. We used the logo on the invitations, the welcome bags we made, and the schedule I created for our family members, none of whom paid much attention to the details I’d shared! We also used the logos to create the table centerpieces, along with pictures of Simon at various ages. We set those up on the Thursday before the party.
The books you can see on the table are for the blessings that take place during meals on Shabbat and they came out really nicely!
People started to arrive on Thursday night and we had pizza and salad for dinner at our house with my brother and his family. Dave’s parents also arrived a bit later and they stayed with us, while everyone else stayed in a hotel and / or with some of our friends.
On Friday morning, we ended up hanging out by the hotel a bit! Here is Simon with one of his younger cousins (my brother’s son) and with one of his older cousins (Dave’s sister’s son).
Then a bunch of us went to Boulevard Brewery for the tour or just to hang out. My kids and my brother’s kids in the photo booth:
We had everyone at our house for sushi before Shabbat and got this group picture of Dave’s side of the family:
We went to Friday night services (which Zachary ended up leading) and had dinner at the synagogue (catered) and there were speeches from my dad, Dave’s dad, Dave’s sister, and my brother. In the morning, we had services where Simon read from the Torah, led part of the service, and Simon and I spoke. Everyone said I spoke well. Then we had lunch with all of our invited friends and synagogue members. We went back to our house in the afternoon and evening, and here are some more pictures of our crazy family members. (Plus one of Simon’s friends in the first one!)
As if we didn’t eat enough already, some of us went to Andy’s for ice cream that evening!
On Sunday morning, everyone came over for bagels and to watch the slideshow I made of Simon’s pictures throughout his life. Simon’s friends came to that as well.
Here they are recreating this picture:
Overall it was a nice time and a great weekend of celebrating Simon!