Whizzing Along

Amirah decided to just whiz through a whole bunch of kriyah (Hebrew reading) and English writing today. Zoom, zoom, zoom. It was great. Two days in a row she's been a writing fiend. :) It's nice to see her enthusiastic about it. We pretty much did at least one thing on each of the remaining pages in her writing book, so we'll just work to fill in all the blanks now. After all that, we decided to head out to the zoo. There's a new baby elephant and we were looking forward to seeing that (our first time, Amirah's second time). I thought it would be pretty cute, but it was C-U-T-E! We had a lot of fun watching him for a while. Afterwards we went and got Amirah a new yom tov outfit, loaded up on chicken at Trader Joe's, then went to pick up Dean from work (and give this hard-working man a cushy ride home instead of the bus). A nice evening too. Except only two more chapters left in Little House on the Prairie. We've ordered the next couple of books from the library, but they're not here yet. Oh, what will we do??? :)

Rosh Hashanah starts Monday night, so now we're pretty much on vacation for a few days. Dean's mom will come up on Monday afternoon and be here for three nights. There's a holiday (or two) every week for the next month, so it's a pretty busy time. We'll pretty much just focus on the basics - reading, writing, ivrit (Hebrew), torah study, and tefillah (prayer). Amirah finished Saxon Kindergarten math yesterday, so in November we'll probably start first grade math.

We're adding a bunch of things over the next month, in addition to all the holidays. Swimming lessons will start twice a week. I'll start teaching my two recorder students again in November (plus the family of piano students that already came back to lessons). Our co-op starts classes in October on Wednesdays. Dean also really wants to study at the kollel (Jewish adult school) a couple of hours per week. He's on the long-term study plan to become a shochet - a Jewish butcher. It involves a great deal of religious and practical training. Who knows when he'll actually become one, but we're not on any kind of schedule. We just want to be able to schecht animals for our own family's needs one of these years.

On another note, I have a new "occupation." I'm now the resident barber. :) I cut Eli's and Dean's hair on Sunday. It went pretty well, except Eli was wiggling all over the place. The buzzing of the shears was kind of making him nervous. His bangs are pretty uneven and he won't let me near them again, but otherwise they both look pretty good! We figure this will save us $200/year... and $300/year when Avi is older! And the shears were only $25. Now I just need to learn to cut girl hair.

Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend!