Weekend Update

With only a half hour to go to candle-lighting, I will give you the abridged version of the last few days:
- We had a lovely international meal Tuesday night and met interesting young women from all over the world- France, Tahiti, and Australia. When we open our home to people we don't know, we are often enriched by meeting new faces with new perspectives and interesting stories to tell.
- I woke up Wednesday morning to my kids having made kiddush for themselves and an entire bottle of grape juice all over the kitchen floor. Thursday morning I woke up to a box of breadcrumbs that was creatively distributed all over the apartment.
- I made a really yummy cheese cake, thanks to my good friend and the recipe of her rebbetzen from seminary.
- The 100 degree weather made it hard to entertain the kids and keep them quiet while my husband was catching up on sleep from learning all night. Solution- Chabad's ice cream party. Ice cream, a playground and air conditioned rooms inside was about as good as it could get. Aside from the fact that either Y or M kept wandering off and I got scared they were going to get lost in the crowd of people and go for a walk down Amsterdam.
- Thursday we actually made it to shul just in time for it to be over. Then we had company and braved the heat to go to the park. After dinner we had A's Har Sinai cake for dessert and spoke about shavuos and sang Torah-songs. That was actually really sweet, to try to get the kids connected to the holiday.
-Today it was back to their routine- which meant school for the kids and cooking/laundry for me. I have to admit that I took it easy and mostly bought take-out for shabbos. I did, however, do 5 loads of laundry. I also treated myself to a pedicure and now my toes (that nobody ever sees) are a cool purple shade, although my husband pointed out it's more like lavender. Or maybe lilac. Either way, very relaxing and a fun splash of color to look at.
- Now I cant believe it's Shabbos again. Looking forward to a quasi-normal week next week. Although nothing is ever quite normal around here. Have a wonderful shabbos