Monthly Archives: December 2008

The Nutcracker

frugal strategies, homeschooling

Tonight I took my three daughters (8, 12, 14) out to see a performance of the Nutcracker.  I’ve taken them three times in the past, but it’s been almost three years since I took them.  In the past, I took them to the same performance, year after year, so when this opportunity came up, I decided it would be nice to go to something similar but different.  We had to rush out after Shabbos, but managed to get there basically in time to meet the group we were going with (we got a school rate for the tickets by joining together with other homeschoolers, so each ticket was $5 instead of $15.)

We’ve been to this theater a couple of other times for other dance productions, and this time decided to see what it was like sitting in the balcony.  I think the seats are good wherever in the theater you sit, but this was a different vantage point that we enjoyed.  Tonight’s ballet was performed by a different dance company than the one we watched in the past, and I was really surprised by what a huge difference it makes in how the scenes are organized.  I kind of assumed that the story and music are basically the same, so how much different could it be?  I was sooo wrong.  Because I’ve seen the other dance company perform it three times, I kept expecting certain scenes at certain times, and it wasn’t happening!  It was fascinating to see how differently the music was interpreted and what very different scenes were conceived based on the same basic story outline.  Coming home, we were listening to an instrumental piece on the radio, and I suggested my girls imagine making up a story and then a dance to go with that music, matching the movements and actions to the music, and then think how much more was involved in such a large scale production.  It made them even more appreciative of the talent and hard work that went into it.

I couldn’t help comparing the two productions, and though this was supposedly on a higher level, and definitely had a tremendous amount of talent, we all agreed that we preferred the performances we’ve seen in the past.  I don’t know if that’s fair to this dance company, because that one is familiar and is the standard that everything else is held up to, but even though we all know it may be unfair to say we like that one better, we do.  🙂  It was a nice girls night out for us all.

Have you ever heard the music for The Nutcracker, by Tchaikovsky?  I enjoy classical music, even though I’m not very knowledgeable about it, and I especially enjoy when a piece I recognize comes on (there aren’t many of those!).  When the Nutcracker comes on the classical radio station, it’s a special treat.  My kids also recognize it right away, and will describe what scene the music goes to.  Six years ago, before I first took the kids to see it performed, we borrowed the music recording from the library and listened to it repeatedly, and we also checked out books on the plot.  That was very helpful in preparing all of us to appreciate the performance.

Two weeks ago, three of my older kids were asked to be ushers for a classical concert that was a local fundraiser, and were able to stay for the entire performance for free because they volunteered.  They enjoyed it, but they found it hard to sit for so long and listen to music being played without hearing any lyrics, even while appreciating the amazing talent of the pianist.  A couple of those kids at the end of November went to a dress rehearsal of our city’s symphony orchestra (a special opportunity for school groups), so this rounds out some of the high level music appreciation opportunities they’ve had recently and is simultaneously expanding their familiarity with classical music.

Avivah

Making fruit leather

dehydrating, food preservation

These past several days, a couple of my boys have been motivated to make fruit leather and dried fruit.  Since we got the dehydrator, dehydrating has been the hobby of my oldest son, but this week, my 9.5 year old got involved as well.  He was feeling like doing something one afternoon, and asked if I would mind if he dehydrated apple slices.

Mind?!?  No, not at all.  I love when my kids do the work and think that I’m such a nice mother for letting them do it.  It’s a good strategy, don’t you think?  🙂  I actually needed bananas dried more than apples, but he wanted to do apples, so I agreed.  These apples are such an amazing snack when they’re dried (they’re the Honey Crisps I told you about before) – they become apple chips, with a very concentrated flavor. 

He also did a few trays of banana chips at the same time – they come out with a leathery consistency.  Also very tasty, but hard to compete with the apple chips. 

My ds15 is the fruit leather expert around here. This week I had about a case of bananas that I bought a couple of weeks ago that was getting very ripe.  We discovered the first time he made fruit leather that bananas are an important ingredient.  It adds a thickness to the texture, and a natural sweetness that goes well with other flavors.  I suppose you could use other things, too, but when he made plain plum fruit leathers, the consistency wasn’t smooth and they cracked.  So to use up the bananas before they went bad, he made plain banana, banana-orange, and banana-orange-apple fruit leathers.  He’s found a nice way to package them – he puts them between two pieces of parchment paper, cuts them into equal size pieces with a scissor, and then stacks them together before bagging them. 

Last night I asked him if he would be able to whip up another batch before he went to sleep, so we could get the last of the bananas out of the way before Shabbos (they need  about 15 hours to dehydrate, so we turn the dehydrator on before we got to sleep).  Even though it was late and he was planning to go to bed, he agreed – he’s such a good kid.  He knows that he could say no to something like this.  There are times I tell my kids to do things, and I expect it done without complaints or argument, but then there are times that I ask them, and that means that a yes or no is equally fine.  He whizzed up a bunch of bananas and some apple in the food processor, so it was pretty quick, especially for him since he’s got the process down.  We didn’t have this processor when he made the first batches a few weeks ago, so this definitely makes the mashing and preparing process faster and simpler. 

Oh – to do this, we spread the fruit mixture on special paraflex sheets that we purchased when we bought the dehydrator. I think you could probably fit pieces of parchment paper over the regular dehydrator rack and it would work fine, but I haven’t tried it so I can’t vouch for how comparable the results are to the paraflex sheets.

Avivah

The Business of Being Born

pregnancy

Last night I went to see this film, The Business of Being Born, at a women’s showing sponsored in the community.  I was ambivalent about attending, since I saw it would be followed by a panel discussion of an ob, nurse midwife, and lactation consultant, and was very skeptical about the value of that discussion.  But yesterday was an emotionally hard day (not because of dealing with my children, but dealing with an adult who acted like a child – not a family member!), and I finally in the afternoon decided I’d like to get out.

I very much enjoyed the film, which was made by producer (?) Rikki Lake.  She had a typical medicalized hospital birth with her first, which was very unsatisfactory, and led her to explore birthing, to learn lots more about it.  That was followed by a wonderful home birth, following her exploration of various aspects of current birth technology and how it affects women.  She shared some of those perspectives and information in this film.  But it’s not an intellectual movie; it doesn’t promote a specific agenda but does give a nice picture of home birth as being a viable and good alternative.  Which I of course like and feel is important, since women need to know that there are other options than hospitals, and that home births aren’t just for hippies or those who have no regard for the safety of their unborn children (roll eyes).

But the discussion after the film – oh, so not worthwhile and very frustrating to sit through.  The ob, though very nice and clearly much more openminded than most, gave a very good medicalized point of view, one that I think was very comfortable in its familiarness to most of the women there and reinforced some unhealthy attitudes rampant in society that birthing women have bought into and don’t serve them well.  I was really trying not to grimace or outwardly show my disgust.  It was such a perfect venue for an open discussion of options that women may not have considered before, and the presence of the ob, in my opinion, shifted the focus away from that to dismissing the film as nice but unrealistic and overly negative about medicalized birth. 

I was so glad that the lactation consultant was there, because she added a very necessary balance to the discussion – like when the ob said she used to back up a birthing center, but they stopped doing it because by the time women who needed it were transferred to the hospital, they were ‘train wrecks’.  To which I was thinking that there was a major assumption being made, that no one in the hospital is a train wreck, when in fact perhaps the majority are.  And bless her heart, the l.c. said, the hospital she worked in has a c-section rate of 45% and serves an affluent and highly educated population – and to imply that hospitalized birth avoids that is simply false.  I later thanked her and said that she added some necessary balance and she told me she found it very frustrating to participate in the discussion.  But at least she could say something – I really, really wanted to jump onto almost every point made by the ob and ob resident in the audience to supplement the missing info.  I only one time interjected a comment, when the ob said that based on studies done in Ireland, they ‘know’ that active birth management improves the birth outcomes, and used that to justify current birthing practices (specifically, to justify inducing labor at 38 weeks for ‘high risk’ mothers).  To which I had to add that a critical part of those studies was that every woman was provided with a doula to support and encourage her from the time she entered the hospital throughout the entire birth – to ignore that factor negates the value of the information gathered in that study.  (Unfortunately, I forgot to mention that another very crucial factor in that study was that the active management of labor began only after a laboring mother reached 4 cm – very different from inducing two weeks early with no signs of labor being imminent.)  The ob nodded to admit that what I said was correct.  Oh, the challenges of being highly educated about birth, and having the personal experience of being a doula for many women, and a childbirth educator for others, and seeing the difference information and empowerment can make – and then having to sit there silent listening to people being sold a bill of goods.  Sigh.

I started reading The Unborn Life of a Child recently, something I haven’t read for years, and I was struck by how outdated the statistics are.  The book was written in the 70s, and the author wrote with concern about rising intervention rates (eg 15% c-section rates), increasing use of technology, and I keep thinking how we’re actually moving backwards into the dark ages of birthing, while thinking we’re so advanced.  Because thirty years later, our statistics are drastically worse than when this book was written, but we’re under the impression that we’re moving forward because we do it with the help of so many bells and whistles, and women really think they are doing the utmost to keep their babies safe, not realizing how many of those ‘improvements’ and ‘advancements’ have decreased maternal and infant mortality in the US (and how many are about money, convenience, and avoiding lawsuits).  Even the ob last night said it’s an embarrassment to the medical community that the US  ranks last among industrialized countries in these crucial statistics.

Anyway, I think the film was just released on dvd, and don’t know about general availability to the public, but if you have the chance to watch it, I think it’s a nice balance to the typical of picture of birth that is presented just about everywhere – on tv, in the movies, when you listen to conversations in waiting rooms…..  I’ve had eight children, and none of my experiences ever matched the picture that is broadcast everywhere.  Actually, when I got to the hospital with my first, I was at 8 cm, which I couldn’t believe – I kept waiting to be dying from pain, and I was managing and I wasn’t yet dead, so I thought I wasn’t so far along.  I’m not joking or exaggerating about that.  I had always heard there is no worse pain, seen women on tv screaming and rolling back and forth in agony, begging for help, and though I was pretty uncomfortable, I was grimacing during contractions – not screaming, not shrieking, not begging for my mother.  And then the birth was over, and I found out first hand that the worst part is what no one tells you about – how you’re just a body, how your wishes are disregarded and you’re unimportant, how you have no privacy or right to say anything about the birth experience once the medical caretakers have decided what they want – and that they won’t even notify you of what they’re doing or why, even though legally and ethically it’s required.  But for baby #2, I thought that was normal and there was nothing I could do about it, except get there as late in labor as I could, and block my mind to how I was treated.

But then I actually got myself more educated during my third pregnancy (took a typical childbirth class with my first that basically prepares you for what will happen at the hospital, didn’t give many tools or enough alternative information to provoke any thought), and wow, did the quality of my births dramatically shoot up from #3 and on!  I had #3 and #4 in a hospital with the most friendly birthing practices around, and then went on to home births from there – and the experience just can’t be compared to a hospital birth.  No matter how nice the staff, how friendly and supportive, it’s not the same as when the caretaker of your choice comes to you, in your environment, when you want them there, and is available to you in the way you want them to be there. 

Some people think that someone choosing a home birth cares more about the ‘experience’ than health and safety, but in actuality, home birthing moms are highly educated about birth, far more than the average mom, and have done a lot of research before coming to that decision.  That’s the nature of making choices that are unusual and that don’t have wide support – it forces you to educate yourself and start sifting through what is fact and what is propaganda.  They know that statistically, the maternal and infant mortality rates are much lower for home births, with significantly better healthy outcomes – and that doesn’t include the emotional satisfaction that is much more important than currently recognized.  After all, birth is a life changing event – every woman remembers every detail of her births; the imprinting is so deep and powerful, and the significance of a negative or positive birth experience will stay with her forever. 

There’s no question that my first home birth, my fifth child, would have been a c-section for failure to progress.  And for 2 of 3 of the next home births, my water broke three days before I gave birth, and I would have been induced after 24 hours.  Had that induction failed, I would have have a c-section for each of them.  That’s three c-sections out of four births avoided by being at home with a qualified and well educated midwife who understood the natural birth process, who was comfortable with different labor patterns that didn’t match the ‘norm’, who knew how to monitor a woman and baby’s health and make sure all vital signs were fine and to let time take time since all was otherwise fine.  Most women in the hospital will never have the luxury of birthing without having the clock ticking on them, and that leads to a lot of unnecessary and damaging interventions, that are justified by ‘we have to do what is best for the baby’.  Which ignores the fact that without these interventions, in the majority of cases the baby and mother wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place!

Now you see why I  never write about pregnancy here – there’s too much to say and I try not to think about what goes on out there and the damage it’s doing to women and babies.  If someone speaks to me, I give them information, but that’s only suitable one on on.

Avivah

Alternatives to sugar

homemaking, nutrition

I’ve mentioned before that I don’t use any sweeteners of any kind for myself, and for my family I absolutely avoid white sugar.  So I’ve been asked a number of times, what sweeteners do I use, and why?

 I try not to use many sweeteners, even those that are healthier and have nutritional value, because I think that sweeteners are meant to be used in small amounts.  What I use the most of is sucanat – this is dehydrated cane sugar juice.  It is rich in minerals, and is very easy to use as a substitute for sugar in baking.  It’s granular and can be used in equal amounts and in the same way.  This is pricier than white sugar (I pay over $1.50 a pound, but that’s because I buy in bulk – usually it would be more), but it’s still the least expensive of the alternatives.

The next thing I buy is honey.  Raw honey is best, and I’m sometimes in an area where I can buy this at a price that is similar to regular honey, so that’s what I get then.  But generally I buy a large container of regular honey – 12 pounds for a little over $30.  I use this mostly for sweetener for teas (right now I’m using it a lot of homemade cough syrup to alleviate a cough that my littlest ones picked up – a couple of cloves of garlic, sliced into a container with equal amounts of raw apple cider vinegar and honey, the garlic flavor steeps into the mixture, they don’t eat the pieces – I give a spoonful every couple of hours). 

I also use agave nectar. I don’t use a bunch of this, but my kids can put it on pancakes, in plain yogurt for breakfast,  etc.  I bought a couple of kinds of molasses, blackstrap and regular, thinking they would be good to use for baking, but this wasn’t a hit in our family.  Consequently, they don’t get used often unless a recipe specifically calls for it.  Stevia is helpful to add sweetness to something, but is used in very tiny amounts.  I bought a small container of this a year ago and have hardly used it so far, so this is something I have around but can’t give many useful suggestions for what to do with it. 

I don’t use maple syrup, only because of the expense.  I have date syrup that someone in Israel brought, but have used it sparingly – probably because I know we can’t get it, so I never want to use it!  But nutritionally, they are both excellent.

There are those who will say that using alternative sweeteners are too expensive, but we’re able to include these regularly instead of turning to cheap and unhealthy white sugar because I’m frugal in other areas of my budget.  This is an area of frugality that is often overlooked – frugality isn’t about doing without, but allotting your resources in a way that is meaningful for you, and creating ‘space’ financially to do what is most important for you.

Avivah  

Oat walnut burgers

recipes

Last night we had these oat walnut burgers for dinner; my kids always enjoy them.  My oldest son asked me what it is that makes them taste like they have meat in them, though they’re vegetarian (vegan, actually).  I think it’s the combination of flavors more than one particular ingredient that does it, but I’ll give you the recipe and you can make your own guesses.

Avivah’s Oat Walnut Burgers

  • 4 c. water
  • 1/2 c. Bragg’s amino acids (available at health food stores)
  • 1 c. finely chopped walnuts (I buy the halves or pieces and whiz them in the food processor)
  • 1/4 c. nutritional yeast (I usually don’t have this around so I leave it out)
  • 1 T. dried basil
  • 1 t. onion powder
  • 1 t. sage
  • 4 c. rolled oats

Combine all ingredients except for oats and boil.  Stir in oats once mix boils.  Remove from heat, let cool.  Make patties – I use a 1/4 c. mixture for each burger, and flatten it slightly once it’s on the baking pan.  Bake on oiled sheet (I used parchment paper instead) and bake for 12- 15 minutes at 350 degrees, or until browned.

Avivah

Toilet training

parenting

A couple of weeks ago we decided now would be a good time for our 2.5 year old to become independent of diapers during the daytime.  This marks a bit of a departure for us from our traditional approach, which is to wait for warm weather and signs of interest on the child’s part.  All of our girls were trained by this age, but most of our boys we waited until around three.

But since he’ll be three in April, and it will still be cold, and since we learned with child no. 6 that waiting longer can often result in a significantly more difficult toilet training process (I never realized until then that there’s a window of opportunity that when missed, is missed) so we don’t want to wait until past three to begin, we decided to go ahead at this point and encourage him start the process.  I wasn’t excited about it, to say the least, because of the time and effort I thought it was going to require on my part.  But my husband very clearly remembers what happened last time, even though it’s been three years, and really didn’t want to go through that again, so he scheduled all of the older kids and himself one weekend to be responsible for taking him to the bathroom every two hours.  Three days of that was enough to get E. to get used to going to the bathroom, and after that we didn’t need to schedule anyone.  At that point, whenever I noticed it had been a while, I’d either take him myself, or ask whatever child was available to take him.  He preferred when his siblings took him, since they would sit on the step right outside the bathroom and read him books.  🙂

I didn’t post anything about this until now, because though he was staying dry most of the time and didn’t have many accidents, I don’t consider a child toilet trained until they take themselves to the bathroom when they need to go, and recognize what they’re doing before they do it.  And though he was going when we took him, he didn’t take himself and would tell us he needed to go as he was wetting himself.  But this week I saw him asking people to help him when he needed to go, or just going himself, so it looks like I can say in all honesty that he’s now toilet trained! 

So to sum up what we did: recognized he  had cognitive ability for it now, then took him on a regular basis (and it only takes once or twice for them to go in the toilet to understand what to do) for a couple of weeks, and now he goes himself.  He still wears diapers for naps and at night, though he often stays dry during his naps.  We still have the baby in diapers now, but no one misses changing a toddler’s dirty diapers.  🙂

I’ve never found this process to be a big deal (except for last time), and I think it’s in large part because don’t make a big deal about all of this, or put any pressure on a child for the process to happen at a certain speed.  I trust that they’ll enjoy feeling clean and dry, and will accomplish that when they’re ready.  I think most problems with toileting arise from starting a child before he is ready, and/or the parent having too much of an emotional involvement or vested interest in the process.  When I referred to waiting too long sometimes being a problem, I think it’s because once a child recognizes their body signals, knows what they are doing, and has learned to ignore those signals, it’s much harder to resensitize them to this. 

Avivah

The best biscuits!

recipes

I’ve made a number of biscuit recipes in the past, but this is hands down my favorite, and I got rid of all the other recipes I had written down once I made this one a few times. I got it from someone on an online discussion board, and she called them Grander Biscuits.  That’s what I call them too, but they’re really good, and worth the extra step of refrigerating overnight (which most biscuit recipes don’t call for).  I make the dough before I go to sleep, and put them in the oven when I get up, and they’re ready in time for breakfast. 

  • 1 c. warm water
  • 4 1/2 t. yeast
  • 2 c. buttermilk (or 2 c. regular milk, with a tablespoon of vinegar for each cup of milk, or you can thin plain yogurt with water until it’s the consistency of buttermilk)
  • 1 1/2 t. salt
  • 4 t. baking powder
  • 1/2 c. sugar (I use sucanat)
  • 1/2 c. oil
  • 1/4 t. baking soda
  • 6 1/2 c. flour (I use all whole wheat)

Mix in the above order.  Refrigerate overnight.  Flour hands, shape into rolls.  Put into greased pan (can be pretty close together, they’ll rise into each other but that’s okay), and bake at 375 – 400 degrees until golden. 

Eat fresh from the oven with butter.  Mmm!

Avivah

How to make polenta

recipes

I love polenta, and so do my kids.  It’s a quick and easy dish that lends itself to different variations for any meal of the day – I make it for breakfast or sometimes lunch. If you buy it in the ready made rolls in the store, it’s expensive, especially since it’s considered a specialty Italian food, but it’s cheap and simple to make on your own. 

  • 1 c. coarse cornmeal (the texture is important, otherwise you’ll end up with cornmeal mush – you can get it in the bulk section of health food stores or in regular grocery stores in the Spanish food section – I buy the 2 lb package from Goya)
  • 1 c. cold water
  • 1 t. salt
  • 3 c. hot water

 Combine the cornmeal and cold water in a bowl – this is to keep it from clumping up in the next step (though my kids were disappointed when I learned this and there weren’t any clumps in the polenta – “but we liked the lumps!”).  In a pot, combine the salt and hot water, and bring to a boil.  Stir in the cornmeal mix and bring to a boil. Continue stirring; after it boils, reduce heat to low.  Simmer ten minutes, then serve. 

I add butter to this after it’s done – not while it’s cooking, because the boiling cornmeal bubbles furiously (I once heard it described as ‘volcanically’ :)) and if there was oil in it, it would be a painful burn if any ended up splattering your hand.  I also like to do things the fastest way possible, so I boil the salt and water, and cook the cornmeal at a high temperature until it’s finished, stirring all the time.  Oh, the best spoon to use when stirring this would be a long handled wooden spoon.  I don’t lower the heat or simmer it at all. 

The way I serve this for breakfast is in bowls, with some butter, and sometimes shredded cheese.  I used to sometimes have grits for breakfast as a kid which was similar to this; I loved it then, and I still like it!  You can also put it in a pan to cool.  It will congeal into the shape of the pan.  This is how the ready made polenta is sold, in congealed round rolls (the shape of sausage).  Once it’s cold, you slice it, and can fry it, bake it with toppings, roast it – there are lots of options.  You can use it as a base for a lot of things, like a tomato sauce with cheese or browned ground meat or roasted veggies on top.  I once was out of lasagna noodles, so I made poured a thin layer of hot polenta into two pans, and let them cool.  Then I used each layer in place of noodles.  It didn’t taste like typical lasagna, but it was tasty and showed me how flexible and creative you can be with polenta. 

I have yet to successfully adapt this to the traditional foods approach I usually use when cooking – cornmeal should really be soaked ahead of time with lime (necessary to release the niconitinamide – vitamin B3, which otherwise stays bound up with the corn), similar to how grains like oats should be soaked in an acidic medium like whey.  If I have time before I go to bed tonight I’ll try it and see how it works tomorrow – the lime will definitely affect the flavor, so I’ll have to see how the kids like it.  I haven’t made doing this a priority since we don’t have a corn based diet, so avoiding pellagra (disease of vitamin B3 deficiency) hasn’t been a major concern. 

The recipe above makes about four cups of polenta; we usually triple or quadruple it for a meal. 

Avivah

Weekly menu plan

menu plans

I’m back from my weekend away, and it’s so nice to be home!  As I said out loud as I drove up to my house, “Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home!”

Here’s my menu plan for the week, a day late 🙂 :

Sunday – b – shakes;  l – I think they made more shakes, I wasn’t here; dinner – chicken soup with rice and leftover cholent

Monday – b – oatmeal, fruit, milk; l – sandwiches; d – sloppy joes, steak rolls, brown rice for those who didn’t want rolls, and cooked vegetables

Tuesday – b – polenta; l – miso soup; d – oat walnut burgers, taco sauce, carrot-pineapple salad

Wednesday – b – banana bread; l – cauliflower soup or casserole; cottage cheese pancakes

Thursday – b – rice pudding – or maybe just hot rice with milk over it and some cinnamon and sweetner – the kids seem to enjoy it more like that; l – whatever leftovers are around, or sandwiches; d – minestone soup with kidney beans and whole wheat pasta

Breakfast will include milk and fruit every day, lunch and dinner usually has some kind of vegetables but I don’t usually plan those in advance.  I stick to this as much as I can, but I shift the menu plan around to accomodate more or less of something so that I don’t end up with leftovers at the end of the week.

Avivah

Going away for the weekend

miscellaneous

Guess what?  Tomorrow I’m going away for the entire weekend – without my family!  I’ll be spending the weekend with over one hundred other women at a special retreat.  I know some of them already, some I’ve gotten to know over the phone in the last year or so, and it will be really fun to match voices with faces!  My husband really encouraged me to go, which helped me overcome my feeling that I should stay home with everyone.  My baby is 15 months and no longer nursing, and will be fine without me, since he’ll be surrounded by everyone else in the family so nothing will be too different in his life.  My toddler is more likely to notice my absence, but again, it makes a big difference to be part of a big family in situations like this – almost everyone else he’s used to spending all day long with will still be there.   

About seven years ago, my grandfather was very ill and I flew to visit him, and was gone for the weekend.  My kids still talk about the food my husband made that weekend – the biscuits that had so much baking powder that they were really bad, and the cholent (Sabbath stew) he made with hotdogs.  As soon as they heard I was going, they turned to my husband with excitement and asked, “Can we have hot dog cholent?!?”  They’re looking forward to a weekend with a different flavor while I’m gone. 

As soon as my now 14 year old (she had a birthday a week ago) dd heard I was going three hours away for this convention, she immediately wanted to know if I could take her to friends in that state for the weekend.  🙂   I told her that I couldn’t chauffer her to any city in the state, but if it was within a reasonably short distance, I’d be willing to drop her off.  When she gave me the address to mapquest, we were both delighted to find out that her friend lives ten minutes from the hotel! 

Then my 12 year old dd wanted to come along when she heard about the plans – one of her favorite friends in the world is the younger sister of the friend my older dd asked about going to.  So I said, sure, the more the merrier.  Turns out my older daughter’s friend (and four other friends she has in that neighborhood) all have a school Shabbaton (activity/trip) planned for that weekend, so she’ll stay with another friend who lives just a couple of minutes away instead.  And now the other girls are arranging their schedules so they can come see her on Friday afternoon, after school ends and before they leave for their trip.   I kind of marvel at how many people she’s friendly with that she feels comfortable spending the weekend with.  I’m so grateful that the hotel is so close and it will be easy to accomodate both of my daughters.  All of my kids are very undemanding and appreciative of what they get, so it’s a pleasure to do things for them, and I’m really glad that I can make this happen for them, particularly for my 12 year old dd.

The plan is to drop them off on the way to the hotel, and then the other four women who are coming along with me and I will head off for a weekend of adult conversation.  (It’s good I have a large van to hold everyone!)  I am really, really looking forward to it!  It’s already midnight, and since I’ll be leaving soon after breakfast, I really need to get myself packed up.  I also have to take all the food I’ll need until Sunday afternoon when I get back, so I have plenty to still do until I’m ready to go!  Since I’ll be doing the driving (though one friend offered to drive for me if I get tired), I also need to get a decent night’s sleep in (particularly since my toddler was throwing up last night so I didn’t get to sleep until after 3 am).

Have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll try to update you Sunday night. 🙂

Avivah