Nice Weekend

My Shabbat Dinner was lovely. We had a great turn-out (although two of the prospective member families did not show up!). We stayed very late, after all was cleaned up. The kids built a "train" out of 160 chairs, about 5 chairs wide, and had races climbing from one end to the other. The cantor's wife and son were away, so Cantor stayed and played on the train with the kids, which left the last few of us grownups to relax and shmooze a bit.

David's best friend A showed up at our house very late that night (he lives in California). Saturday, the two men took the two boys for a nice long hike, so it was girl-day. I biked Sofia over to the new playground at her school.


(Almost forgot, the 'scary' story. So while at the playground, I overhear two other adults. The man is very very loud, and very opinionated. "You know the reason we can't even have religion in the public schools, or say anything about Jesus? The &^*% liberal Democrats!"

Funny, here all along I thought it was because we have separation of church & state and not everyone in this great country of immigrants is Christian!

But he scared me a bit, so I called my friend and spoke to her a bit in Hebrew just to feel more secure. He wasn't the kind of person worth confronting; I feared he would attack me - and my daughter - even further if I tried to correct him).


Then we took a drive so she could fall asleep. While she napped, I got about 7 scrapbook pages done (I'm still working on our December 2006 trip to Israel!). When she woke up, we went over to Ashland Day for a little while. The boys got home around 6, and I had leftovers from the Friday night dinner. We grownups stayed up fairly late. I had been planning to go to shul for the Selichot program (traditional late-night service and learning session a week or so before Rosh Hashanah), but it started at 9 and I was still putting the kids to bed at that point.

Today I took the boys to soccer, David took Sofia to her music class, and A stayed home to do some work. He doesn't have kids, and I think the sheer amount of noise in our house was a bit overwhelming for him. When we all got home, we had pizza at the park. Then David went to work, and I took the kids and A for a ride (trying to get Sofia to nap, but no luck).

Back home, the boys watched a movie on TV. Sofia started ripping apart my room, so I took her for a quick drive and then for a walk. When the boys were done with the movie, we all went over to the playground again; David met us there.

Back home, quick dinner, David left for the airport (off to Philly), and Sam's new guitar teacher showed up at 5:45. It went well. I gave Sofia a bath during the lesson, but she is bouncing around her room now with Micah (who has also showered), while Sam is now in the shower.

Some playground shots:







And now for some comic relief, forwarded via email by my friend J:



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