A Normal Week

Well, now we are in the swing of "normal" (for us, that is). Last week was fairly relaxing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Only "special" was Friday morning, I ran my first All School Tefillah. I'm told it went well, but it was waaay too long for my taste. More than an hour. Stressful. But the kids did GREAT. I made sure every child had a part, too, which was nice. The kids at this school ROCK!

Friday night, H and her kids came for Shabbat dinner. Always fun. Her kids are each about 1.5 - 2 years younger than mine, but each pair get a long great. Sam is very relaxed and silly around 5th grade (girl) S, Micah and B are good buddies, and Sofia absolutely worships G, who is in the kindergarten class at the day school. It was anice evening.

Shul on Saturday was long, but really nice. I bounced around with Sofia - she tried the kindergarten service, but then we went to the preschool service, because they had a great "snacktivity" making Noah's Ark and rainbows out of food. Yum. Sam "broke" his toe on Friday night (it's not really broken, but he thinks it is; it's just banged up and hurts a lot), so he sat in main service with David, and I'm fairly certain Micah spent most of his time in the Youth service in the chapel.

After lunch, there was a stand-up Kiddush (just light snacks), but then there was a light lunch if you stayed for the Study Session. Which we did. It was really interesting, and fun to study. The boys were not interested, and spent most of the time in the hallway. Sofia was fine as long as she was eating, but then she had to wander out to the hall with her brothers.

We had one incident - a new member, who really wanted to study, but her very young daughter was making a lot of noise. An older member, who was having a bad day, got up and yelled at us to get the kids out. The new member was in tears. I had to grab her back, and hand her daughter off to the boys (I was VERY proud of my boys for helping!). I was impressed, however, with how the clergy handled it. Cantor (and his Rabbi/wife) had been in the hallway with the kids, so I told them what happened when I took the girls out. After the study session, they came in and sat with us, and the Rabbi came over and ate his lunch with us. We continued the study discussion, very relaxed. There was no mention of the Incident, and the new member was able to calm down a bit.

When the Rabbi stood up, we did mention it, and he was either totally clueless, or brilliant (and if you know him, I'll let you make your own decision...). He was "competely unaware" of the lady yelling at us during the session, and told us how that lady was having a really hard and stressful day, and then said how it really wasn't a problem, just could be difficult for some people to concentrate if the kids got too loud. It was graceful (if it was purposeful), in that he did not denigrate either position - it was difficult for the one lady to concentrate, but those of us with small children have every right to be included, and next time we will arrange something specific to keep the kids occupied.

Anyway, we had a very relaxing rest of Shabbat (we didn't even get home until 3pm!). The rain and then the snow kept us tucked into the house all day. After we put Sofia to sleep, the rest of us played a long game of Electronic Banker Monopoly, which Micah had gotten for his birthday. I HATE board games ("bored" games!), and Monopoly with my three captains of industry is entirely unpleasant for me, but it was still nice. And I went bankrupt fairly quickly, so I could come back upstairs and get ready for bed ;)

Sunday, lots and lots of very wet snow. We only lost power for about half an hour at night (that's what put an end to the game), so we were lucky. The surrounding area is still without power.

I took the boys to see their friend perform in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in the afternoon, while David took Sofia to his office - she watched movies while he worked. In the evening, we had a nice fire in the fireplace.

Back to school and real life today. The boys are looking forward to Halloween tonight - the dads on the street usually take the kids, while moms are on door-duty. I'm looking forward to some quiet time!