Shanah Tovah - Happy New Year

I wish all of you a sweet, joyous and healthy New Year. May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life and Peace.

Rosh Hashanah was lovely. I'm in the Chamber Choir for shul, and we did two pieces - Zacharti Lach and Halleluyah, both by Lewandowski. So I had a couple of rehearsals during the week. I thought there would be another soprano, but she got sick and never showed up at services. And I'm not really a soprano, so it was HIGH. But fun, and we sounded good.

Sunday evening we had Erev Rosh Hashanah dinner at N's house with a few other families. Nice time. Laura and Lilie came up, too. The two little girls made a bee-line for G's closet when we arrived, and both left wearing "new" clothing. At one point, however, Sofia came out and REEKED of perfume! Turned out the boys had sprayed the boys with Axe! Sofia had to take a bath before we could leave for home. (She loved it!)

Monday, services in the tent were lovely, but the choir was singing in the Sancutary/Social Hall (our shul has two services for the holidays; the Rabbi and Cantor are Team One, and the Rabbi Emeritus (Harold Kushner) and Chazan Sheni (Joel Sussman from Safam) are Team Two. They alternate services. So first day we were inside with the Cantor, and he was nervous about us so had us come in waaaay too early. So I ended up bouncing between the two services for a while, which was disconcerting. But the singing went well, and I managed to hear at least most of Rabbi Kushner's sermon.

We had a lovely dinner at our friends' home like we do every year, and went home early. Laura and Lilie couldn't stay the extra night this time :(

Second day was easier in terms of logistics, since everything I was doing was in the tent. But with Laura gone, David and I had to watch Sofia. She did manage to stay with us for nearly all the service, rather than going to Youth Services. We arrived fairly early, and for some reason the tent service was going VERY fast - after 30 minutes, they were already on the Torah Service. People actually missed some assigned honors because we got to those parts too early.

But Sam read the Prayer for Israel (mostly in English, with a couple of lines of Hebrew) really well. He looks so handsome in his suit and his (very large) tallit. Such a young man!

I also blew Shofar later in the service, right before we sang the two choir pieces. Whew.

Our house for Tuesday, with N and the kids, r and her girls, V and our "old lady friend". Very nice time.

The rest of the week has been busy. Sam's really having trouble adjusting to 8th grade, so he's keeping me hopping. Sofia had her new ballet class this morning and it went GREAT. She even enjoyed the tap portion of the class (I guess most of the schools here do both in the intro classes). She stayed engaged the whole time, and the teacher and assistant were both terrific. WHEW!

So I took her this morning, but then David switched with me, and I took the boys to shul so we could be on time, since I was reading Torah. He and Sofia arrived long before it was my turn, so we need not have worried.

Going to celebrate our friend E's birthday (belatedly) tonight. Yeah! Getting ready for the next few holidays, and for the Buddy Walk on October 7. My parents are actually coming for it this time!