Lovely Shabbos

No matter how irksome and stressful Dean's work might be, shabbos always comes to remind us why we're here, and why he's doing that job. Thank you, DH, for all that you are doing that brought us here! We love Savannah and are so very happy to be a part of this community. Amirah just hopped around all over the place yesterday - shul, our house (where we had very fun guests), two doors down, two blocks away to two different houses, walked her mommy and siblings home, then off to shul with papa, then a round of visiting with our second-closest neighbors. That girl is grinning ear to ear, as are they all.

The other excitement was an Ebay delivery today of four of The Happy Hollisters books, published in the 1950s. Our composition book had excerpts from the first book, and Amirah really loved the excerpts. The library did not carry them, and I was able to get four of the books from Ebay for only $9.50 (hardback!). We're halfway through the first book, and Eli and Amirah are both really enjoying it too. Maybe Avi is too, since that's the book he brought me for his good-night book! Every chapter is a cliffhanger, and it is hard to put it down! So that will be our without-papa book, and The Hobbit will continue to be our with-papa book.

I've also purchased nearly all of our learning books for next year, mostly from Ebay and the Well-Trained Mind forum. I've been able to get everything we need at 30–50% off, so I'm very happy about that!!! I need a few more books for kodesh, but I'll probably wait until summer to order those.

Finally, take a look at what's coming up at the 2nd Annual Torah Home Education Conference in Baltimore. Amirah and I would love to find a way to attend, so we're hoping to make that possible. It partly depends on funds, and partly on if we can find someone to watch the other three kids all day the Friday before. Then Amirah and I could spend shabbos and the conference day there in Baltimore. They'll have activities for the kids to do, so I know Amirah would have a great time. Purely business, of course (ha ha ha, I would LOVE to have a mini-escape with oldest daughter!!!!!). So, we'll see.

Today we went to the park at Mayer Lake. Amirah thought the signs that said: "Warning, alligators in lake." was very funny. Lots of great birds too - herons, terns, gulls, geese, ducks, and... roosters! A little playground, and a windy walk along the lake. Then a couple of errands, a bunch of cleaning, cleaning, and cleaning (so far, so good!), and then friends came over after dinner. We projected a video of their son's bar mitzvah in Israel onto the screen. It was lovely, lovely and they really enjoyed seeing it bigger than life size. It felt like we really were right there too.

Back to the trenches for the papa, and back to learning for us. Here's to a good week!