Earlier this week I traveled to Jerusalem for the Temech business conference, an event geared specifically to religious women.  The organizer is one of my blog readers and I was delighted to meet her – and other blog readers- there.

I had a fantastic time connecting with so many people!  This was the best thing and worst thing about the conference – too many great people to talk to! – and I missed the last session that I wanted to sit in on because of my shmoozing.  🙂

Naturally I heard other women saying how wonderful and empowering it was, and I also heard some grumbles.  It made me think about how quick people are to complain and how slow they are to express their appreciation.

Several weeks ago I completed a repair in my building that was part of a problem for eight years.  I took on the job of building representative in the beginning of August and at that time I hired someone who located the leaks in the building and then took care of getting them fixed. The final part of the repairs was to replace the tiles that had been pulled up in the entranceway of the building before I took over.  These had been left open because they didn’t want to close up the flooring only to have to rip it up again if the pipes there were the cause of the leaks.

I spent months speaking to all the members of the building until I got a majority of people to sign that they agreed to have the entrance way repaired.  That gave me the legal backing to do the repairs.  But it still meant I had to get everyone to pay, which was very, very difficult.  This was a huge stress for me.

Someone in the building called me when I was in the hospital after I was burned and asked how she could help. I told her I was feeling very pressured that I hadn’t yet collected money from everyone, and the biggest thing she could do for me was to speak to the three people who hadn’t yet paid.  She agreed and I was very grateful for this because it took a huge weight off my head.  The only problem was that these are tough people to deal with. So this woman trying to help was brought to tears when speaking to them because the way they talk is to yell and attack you, and I was left to collect the rest of the money on my own.  (Yes, being yelled at and attacked.  Fun times.)

There were many hours put into getting this done and many, many steps involved in what could have been a very simple repair.  17 months after the floor was left broken open and nine months after I began the process of getting this repair done, I had the entrance flooring completed.  It was such a huge accomplishment that I felt like throwing myself a party.  But I mentally prepared myself to not be thanked, not for the many hours I put into getting it done, nor the end result.  That’s human nature, to comment only when something is wrong.

Good thing.  Not only was there hardly a word of thanks, but the next morning someone yelled up to me through my window – from outside – that the building was disgusting and dirty since the floor hadn’t been mopped after the repair was done!  It couldn’t be mopped after the tiling was done since it had to be left to dry overnight, but it had been thoroughly swept.   After almost a year and a half of daily looking at this eyesore and safety hazard, she couldn’t spend literally one moment to appreciate that it was fixed.

That’s how some people are, no matter what they only see what they don’t have.  Some people actually look for things to be miserable about.  This is the key to having a miserable life!  Look for everything in life that doesn’t line up for what you want and then complain to everyone you see about what a miserable life you are and how much you suffer.  Ignore everything good that happens and take it for granted as your due.

Several weeks ago I received a note from a blog reader expressing her appreciation for what I write.   I’m blessed with a high quality readership and always appreciate when readers take the time to let me know if something I’ve written has been helpful for them.  In this case, she not only wrote but took the extra effort to put a card in the mail to me from overseas!  As nice as it was for me to receive, the person writing it got just as much as I did from the act of writing and sending it.  You know what she got?

She reinforced with her action the kind of person she wants to be and the kind of life she wants to have.  Writing that card made her a more thoughtful, caring and appreciative person, and as a result she’ll have a more fulfilling and happy life.

Expressing gratitude can be hard, since it means acknowledging that someone enhanced your life in some way, which implies that you would have been lacking without it.  Also, sometimes people feel they have to notice what they don’t have because the focus on what they want will bring them more.

It doesn’t work like that.  You don’t become better by bashing yourself for being inadequate and life doesn’t hand you more goodies when you don’t notice the huge platters piled up all around you.

The more you appreciate what you have in your life, the more good will flow in.  Regardless of what you do or don’t have in your life in that moment, focusing on what you have will make you a happier person.  And being a happier person means you have a more fulfilling life.  This happens step by tiny step, every time you pause and practice gratitude in your life.

It’s that simple.

Avivah

(This post is part of the Hearth and Soul hop.)

After seven weeks of spiritual preparation, Shavuos is almost here!

My physical preparations for the holiday are similar to every year.  We have one fish meal, one meat meal, and have a dairy breakfast kiddush that includes cottage cheese, sliced cheese, flavored yogurts, butter and cheesecake.

I’ll once again be giving a class on Shavuos afternoon for women; this year I’ll be talking about some of the life lessons we can learn from the Book of Ruth (5 pm – 25 Tse’elon St.).  It’s an amazing book repleted with many levels of wisdom.  I’ll also be sharing some thoughts on Shavuos more briefly at a women’s kiddush on Shavuos morning (10 am – 36 Shizaf St.).

In past years I’ve often felt spiritually unprepared for this holiday, which is foundational to the Jewish people as a marker of the giving of the Torah thousands of years ago.  This year, I was sent an incredible growth opportunity that has helped me have my mindset in the right place.

Two months ago, boiling cosmetic wax exploded in my face, coating my entire face and neck.   The only thing I could think was, “I’m burning, I’m burning!”  When inside the ambulance they asked me to rate my pain from 1 – 10 (ten being the worst), I could hardly think through the pain to answer them.  Since I wasn’t screaming in pain I told them a 5.

When I later told my ds15 this, he was incredulous.  He said, “Mommy, 5 on the pain scale is when people are still smiling!”  If I had been able to accurately say how I was feeling, I would have said a 9; 10 was when it exploded all over my face and I have no reference for anything in my life to that pain.  But I couldn’t think through the waves of pain I was in to give an accurate number – I could hardly speak at all.  In the emergency room, I overheard someone ask my attending doctor why I hadn’t been given pain medication, and he told them my pain was only at a 5.  Later in the burn unit the nurse was shocked that I hadn’t had pain meds in the ER and told me I didn’t have to be a martyr.  I told her I wasn’t being a martyr, no one offered me any.

The pain I felt was only a small part of what I was feeling – the terror about what my face was going to look like afterwards was so high that it was even more intense than my physical pain.  I’ve shared my thoughts then to find a perspective that helped me manage that fear; now I’ll share what I did to manage the pain.

After glancing in the mirror above the sink where I was splashing my face with water to keep it cool, I saw my skin peeling away and that was terrifying.  For a moment I couldn’t breathe and my stomach dropped and I had a horrible feeling of doomed desperation.

My face felt like as if it was literally on fire – an intense heat that didn’t abate. When the ambulance crew came, I told them I needed something right away for my face, I was burning.  It took about fifteen minutes until they put wet compresses on my face.  I don’t know how I would have managed this if I hadn’t brought a soaking towel with me; this and mostly my thoughts were all that kept it bearable.

As I lay there in the ambulance, I imagined that the burning feeling was actually a cooling, soothing sensation; I pictured God placing cooling gel packs all over my face.  Along with the gel packs, I searched my mind for peaceful and pleasant images to focus on… it was hard to think …most images were too hard to hold on to through the pain.  What kept coming up were the potted plants on my porch.  I didn’t let myself focus on the pain;  I kept pushing my thoughts back to the gel pack and my plants.  This was my pain medication.

This may sound strange, but when I was burned, I had an overwhelming feeling of God swooping me up and telling me how much He loved me.  Time slowed down and things that had been agitating in my mind quieted and disappeared.  I’ve gone through other difficult things and it took a long time to see something good about them, but this time it was clear to me from the very beginning that this was sent to me for emotional healing and spiritual elevation.

My face is  healing amazingly fast.  Two weeks ago I went back to the burn specialist in Jerusalem and asked her how long it would take for my face to be totally healed.  She said that everyone is different and it’s impossible to know, and then added, “ But you,” she told me, “the change from when you were here last to how you look now is literally a miracle!” And people who saw me two weeks ago and saw me this week can’t believe the difference since then.  It’s amazing.

The burn specialist told me on my first visit that it’s inexplicable that I didn’t sustain third degree burns – she explained that wax usually penetrates an additional layer of skin.  I asked her what she attributed this to – was it because I immediately washed my face and kept it moist until I got medical help?  No, this didn’t make a difference – she said the fact that I sustained only second degree burns was “your mazal (luck)”.  If I had third degree burns, I would have been hospitalized for months and who knows what my face would look like…

And my eyes… I was wearing glasses but the force of the explosion blew wax all over one eyelid and right under both eyes  – literally all that wasn’t burned on my face were my eyes and the bridge of my nose where my glasses were resting.  When I think of life without vision and how easily I could have lost that …I can’t even think about how good God was to me without getting teary.

This experience has taught me things I needed to learn, things that I’m trying to keep in the forefront of my mind even in the day to day busy living.  It’s helped me to let go and trust God more, knowing that things that are meant to happen will happen no matter what.  That I don’t have to be afraid of the unknown because He’ll help me get through whatever is coming.  It’s helped me to fully embrace the stage of life where I am, living where I do, being who I am.  It’s helped me to nurture myself more and love myself more.  And it’s helped me to recognize what is most important in life – becoming the person that God wants me to be, through the lens of Torah.

This has been my preparation for Shavuos this year.  As I finish writing this, It’s 9 am on erev Shavuos and I haven’t yet started my cooking, my husband hasn’t yet left to do the shopping, and I haven’t yet worked out the specifics of what I’ll be giving a class on.  But inside me I feel ready for Shavuos.

Wishing you all an uplifting and meaningful Shavuos!

Avivah

After months of research, planning and networking in order to make the move to the center of the country, we’ve had a change in our moving plans!

We’ve decided to stay put in Karmiel.

Before sharing why, let me recap.  What prompted us to consider moving was our desire for our older kids learning in Jerusalem to be able to live at home.  The second tier of the decision was that we would have more and better educational options for the middle kids, and more medical/therapeutic support for our T21 needs .  The third tier of the decision is that we’d have more support of all kinds – social, homeschooling, rabbinic advisors and Torah learning…

All of those reasons are still valid.  Nothing has changed as far as all of those potential benefits.  Some things have changed for us, though.

Firstly, if dd19 comes back in the coming year, she’ll be studying at a seminary with a dorm.  Dd17 is seriously considering switching to a seminary with a dorm.  Boom – the two kids we thought needed us to be in the center the most aren’t so critical anymore.  At this point we reassessed the wisdom of moving for our older kids, who could very well all be married within the next two years, and disrupting the lives of our younger kids at home, who are all happy here and don’t want to move.

My husband had some reservations about living here when we first discussed moving back in October but with time those have faded away and he’s happy to stay.  I had one personal concern about staying here that I resolved inside myself, though I’ve been sad about the thought of moving ever since we made the decision.   I couldn’t see this feeling as valid because it felt irresponsible of me to put my desire to stay where I am before the needs of my kids.  It’s not easy starting over and I felt depleted most of the time when thinking about it, but tried to focus on the positives – and there were lots of positives about moving.

Getting to this decision, being willing and able to think through all the changing details, was mostly due to my recent hospitalization after being burned almost six weeks ago.  All that quiet time gave me the ability to recognize my inner voice, the one that I too often subdue in order to do the responsible/logical thing.  Recognizing that voice was critical in being willing to listen to the voice that kept saying, “I’m happy here and don’t want to leave and don’t want to start over somewhere else.”  I’ve been hearing that voice for months and kept overriding it with my long list of reasons to leave and the need to be in the center of the country for my kids.  Finally I could recognize this was my inner voice rather than the voice of fear (which is what I was attributing it to), and change plans accordingly.

There are a lot of parts to this decision – my desire to put down roots and stay in one place, recognizing that I need to trust God that if there’s something I don’t have now and will need in the future (this is specifically regarding schooling alternatives for the older grades), remembering to live in the moment and not get caught up planning too far ahead, my mother living a fifteen minute walk away from us now and the importance for us all in being able to be there physically for one another, looking at other communities underscoring how very many things we like about being here….but it honestly comes down to listening to what my heart is telling me.

I’m not sorry that we planned to move even though it took up tremendous head space, since it gave us a chance to reevaluate from a different perspective; my husband and I are in full agreement that this is the right thing for us.   When I told him I thought it was a mistake to move and all my reasons why, his response was total agreement – he said he had felt the same way but since we had agreed to make the move he didn’t want to back away from it!  I do feel a bit of regret that I won’t have those advantages that I was looking forward to in being in the center of the country.  But mostly I have a sense of peace and being settled, and after so long being in limbo about moving, that’s a really wonderful feeling.

Avivah

In the last week I’ve begun venturing out and that means that I’ve begun to see people.  And people have begun to see me.

I’ve been noticing a very interesting reaction that almost everyone is having.  Most people aren’t looking at me directly when they first see me; they keep their heads tilted away and then take a quick furtive glance when they think I’m not looking at them.  I don’t know if they’re afraid what they’re going to see of if they don’t want to make me feel self-conscious.

Once they look at me, most people tell me how good I look, that it’s not nearly as bad as they were expecting.  That’s probably because they’re thinking I’ll look the way I looked in the beginning!  I’ve been healing amazingly fast and often I have a hard time believing that it was less than six weeks ago that my entire face was a swollen mass of blisters.  Other than the medical staff, only my husband saw me at that point – last week he told me in the beginning he honestly wondered if and when I would look like myself again.  It was very bad.

At first when people were telling me how it didn’t look so bad, it felt a bit invalidating.  Like, oh, we thought something serious happened but it couldn’t have been so bad if you look like this now.  That’s just how it felt to me, that’s of course not how it was intended.  While I look a lot better now, no one is dreaming of looking like me and I don’t want to stay looking like this forever either.

I was wondering objectively what I look like since everyone is saying how good I look but I have a mirror and I know what I look like!  Then a couple of evenings ago I went out and happened to bump into someone who didn’t know about my accident.  She looked startled and after a couple of minutes of small talk while looking at me searchingly, asked straight out, “What happened to your face?”  

So do I look amazing or do I look really bad?  I look amazing, relative to what I went through.  The redness of the new skin mostly covered the scarring in the initial period and for those who saw me then (on Pesach and right before) it looked like a very bad sunburn.  Then the redness passed (in just a week! – the burn specialist told me it takes between 2 weeks to six months) and the scars were obvious.  The front of my face is where the obvious marks are left; l have a lot of splotches across my forehead and all the way down to my chin, including my eyebrow area, eyelid and under the eyes. The splotches are a dark reddish color.  But they’re fading and getting smaller.

The scars on the front of my neck up along to under my chin are sizeable but have faded to a light skin tone so while it’s visible it’s not jumping out at you, either.  Twice a day I use a special cream to help with scarring that I got from the burn specialist in Jerusalem.  The splash marks that were across the outer two thirds of my cheeks are totally gone.  On the side of my neck and ear you can’t tell anything happened.

I have one burn mark on my hand that I didn’t treat at all – not purposely, just my face was more important and I didn’t pay any attention to it.  This now serves as a reminder to me what my face could have looked like, what people are expecting it to look like, and what I was afraid I would look like.  That scar is slightly raised, wrinkled and discolored and if the scars on my face looked like this it would be disfiguring.

I’m not going to post a photo of myself though I’m tempted to show a before and after picture (though I don’t have a picture from when the burns were the worst) just so you can appreciate how miraculous the difference is.  People keep asking me when my face will be fully healed and the answer is, I don’t know.  No one will tell me that I will totally heal – though I’m very optimistic that I will – and I  certainly haven’t been given a timeline.  I’m going back to the burn specialist in Jerusalem today and am looking forward to hearing her feedback.

I’ve been extremely conscientious about skin care and sun avoidance, and this is part of why my healing has been so good.  The bigger part, I’m positive, is the prayers of so many people on my behalf.  Thank you all!

Avivah

Some people have commented that it’s not fair that so many difficult things have happened to our family in the recent past.  I don’t agree – I think we each get what we’re meant to get, and what’s fair is what we get.

I also think that I’ve been very, very lucky.  My burns were extremely painful and traumatic, but it could have been much, much worse.  When I went to the burn specialist in Jerusalem and she heard what happened, she told me that wax usually penetrates through an additional layer of skin; if this would have happened I would have had third degree rather than second degree burns.  She couldn’t explain why this didn’t happen to me.

When I got home from the hospital it  was the first time I could see the small details of my face very close up, since in the hospital there was a counter between me and the mirror.  At home I was able to see what the staff was referring to when they repeatedly said how lucky I was.  I knew that the only place not burned was around my eyes, but I didn’t realize how very close to my eyes it was – just a centimeter and a half at the most around each eye.  One eye didn’t even have that much.  God was very kind to me.

Someone at the hotel who I had just met told me she read about me in the Pesach issue of the Hebrew language Mishpacha magazine and gave me her copy so I could read the article myself.  When I spoke with the  interviewer about six weeks before the issue came out, the woman told me she enjoyed speaking to me but didn’t think what I said would fit in with her angle.  She later called me and told me that she rarely hears someone speaking the way that I did, that she was so inspired that she decided to write up some of what I shared with her.   I’m usually not sure what people are referring to when they say that I inspired them, but in this case I think it was my attitude toward seemingly negative events.  

After we moved to Israel, our peaceful and pleasant life was turned upside down.  It was a marathon of challenges, and every time I would think things were about to get easier, they got worse.  Some people have asked me if I’m sorry if I made aliyah, since it’s unlikely any of these difficulties would have occurred if we stayed in the US.  My answer – and this is what I shared with the interviewer- is that I’m very glad we moved to Israel, despite the challenges.  It’s true that I wouldn’t have had these difficulties if we hadn’t come, but I’m sure we would have been sent different challenges instead.

Why am I so sure of that?  I believe we are each a soul given a body so that we can actualize our mission in this world.  The problem is that while the soul knows why it was put here, the physical self  is generally oblivious to having a soul.  It would be hopeless for us to hook into our spiritual selves and accomplish this mission if we were left to our own devices, but God sends us regular reminders and nudges towards our mission every day via the circumstances of our lives.  Sometimes they’re smaller and sometimes they’re bigger.

Everything that happens to us is meant to bring us closer to our soul’s purpose, and everything we are given is a tool to help us. Sometimes our tools includes wealth, beauty, loving family and friends.  Sometimes it doesn’t include any of those.  Every person has a unique mission and has the tools he needs for his mission.  Sometimes we veer off course and things happen to help us get back on track, to move us closer to our mission.  Sometimes we misread the messages and they get sent to us again and again in different ways until we get the message.  Those messages usually come cloaked as difficulties.

What about the pain and suffering we sometimes – often – experience?  Hard things happen to all of us.  Sometimes It can feel painful and horrendous.  Sometimes we cry and scream, and ask why did this happen to us, why are we being punished.  That’s our perception and it’s valid.  But it’s not complete.

If a parent yanks his child’s arm painfully hard to pull him out of the path of a truck barreling towards him at high speed, is the parent being cruel?  Is he punishing his child?  Most of us would agree that inflicting this short-lived pain on his child is the most loving thing this parent could do, because the alternative would be so much worse.  

I believe that God loves us more than we can imagine, and everything He does comes from a place of love.  (I was recently speaking with someone whose husband was killed on a bus that was blown up by a suicide bomber, and she agreed with me that there are things that you can say about your own situation but others shouldn’t tell you.  This is one of those things – when someone told me a day after my accident that it happened because God loves me so much, I told her that I know God loves me very much – but that I didn’t appreciate her comment because my knee jerk reaction to it was negative.)  I believe my accident was an act of kindness for me, to help me shift out of the thinking that was taking me in the wrong direction, and realign myself in a way that will bring me more happiness and contentment.

If everything that happens comes from a place of love and for our ultimate good, can it be bad?  My personal belief is that no, it can’t.  It can feel bad.  But it can’t be bad.  

This thought has helped me tremendously in difficult circumstances.

I don’t pretend to have a wide angle view on why things happen to me, let alone to anyone else.  That’s not my realm and it’s not necessary.  I relate best to the concept of a tapestry – on one side, it looks like a bunch of knots that seem random and ugly.  Turn it around and look at it close up and even when looking at the correct side, all you can see are specks of color that still seem random.  It’s only when you look at it from a distance that you can see the whole picture, and the picture is breathtakingly beautiful.  And all of a sudden, the knots and randomness all makes sense, as it becomes clear that each tiny detail had to be there for the tapestry to be complete.

Avivah

Wow, what a wonderful Pesach we had!  It was so restful and renewing.

It didn’t start off so smoothly but that’s how beginnings often are, and fortunately the longer we were there, the better it was!

The most challenging thing was the communal seder, which was very different from our usual seder.  Our family had a huge table – they didn’t want us to be squished so they gave us a double sized table that would have easily seated 22 people instead of just the 12 of us.  That was very thoughtful of them but the table size combined with all the noise of the dining room meant we couldn’t hear each other talking!  I had two boys who were literally crying at the seder from confusion, my two youngest boys (except Yirmi) weren’t even aware of what was going on at our table, the older kids were grimacing and it was pretty much impossible to conjure up the atmosphere we usually have at home.

We decided to follow the leader of the communal seder rather than do our own thing, and it got better once we had the meal.  Our family sang during the meal and other people joined in with us, and at the end of the seder everyone who was left put their chairs around the table in the center and sang together.  It was really nice.  I was later told by the organizer how grateful they were that we were there, since she had tried unsuccessfully to find yeshiva guys to come to add a nice holiday spirit – and then we showed up.  🙂  So it was very different but ended up being a nice experience.

This wasn’t a Pesach hotel, but a hotel people go to for Pesach.  That means that there weren’t inspiring speakers or a lineup of activities – in fact, even what I had been told to expect wasn’t quite accurate.  I was told there was an exercise room, a basketball court and an Olympic size pool with separate swimming.  I was also told that an outreach organization had rented out most of the hotel for all of Pesach and we would be able to attend their lectures and participate in their day trips.  

However, it wasn’t quite as I expected!  Isn’t it funny how often life is like that?  There was no access to the exercise room without paying an extra fee since it isn’t owned by the hotel, there was no basketball court and the pool not only wasn’t large, it had minimal hours for separate swimming that coincided with breakfast and dinner.  The outreach organization was there only the first and last day of Passover, so for most of the time there were no lectures and definitely no day trips.  The internet in our room was only available for an extra charge and the free internet in the lobby wasn’t working for most of the time.  That meant it was quiet and even a bit boring after the first couple of days – and it was the absolute best thing for our family.

What did the hotel have?  A ping pong table, two huge jumping structures and a play area for younger kids in the inner courtyard.  A lobby where we sat around for long periods together hanging out.  Delicious meals three times a day on Shabbos and yom tov, and twice a day otherwise.   We had lots of time to just be together without any pressure to be anywhere or do anything, and this is exactly what we needed for emotional healing for everyone.

My kids were really traumatized by my accident.  Dd13 is the one I told to call for help and she was very frightened and overwhelmed; she didn’t know what to do.  I gave her instructions but she was – understandably – very shaken up.  Ds4 was standing next to the bathroom door solemnly staring at me frantically splashing my face with water while waiting for the ambulance, until I noticed him and shut the door so he wouldn’t be scared.

When the ambulance crew got there, they asked me what happened.  As I began to answer I saw my kids were there and told them to leave the room before I continued.  I didn’t know what I looked like by then – I had seen a glance of my face in the mirror above the sink a few minutes before while I was splashing and saw the contours were beginning to change and my skin coming off – and didn’t want them to see anything that would scare them because it sure did scare me.  But despite my efforts it was very frightening for them.  Ds11 told me a few days later on the phone that hearing me scream when I was burnt was what frightened him most.

A day or two after I was in the hospital I was talking to ds6 on the phone, and he asked me when I was coming home and then he asked, “Are you going to die?”  I said, “No, I’m not going to die but that was very scary for you, wasn’t it?”  He quickly changed the topic and said, “I’m just joking.”  He wasn’t just joking.  Our little kids have such big feelings…My younger boys have been talking a lot about things coming to an end and fulfilling their purpose in their world, toys and things in nature and people.  Some of their comments are pretty intense.

I was worried for dd17 and ds15 that this Pesach break was turning into a repeat of last year, when I was in the intensive care unit with Yirmiyahu, with all of the emotions that was bringing up.  Yirmiyahu was extremely unsettled and clingy no matter what anyone did.  It wasn’t until we were at the hotel a couple of days that he returned to himself, relaxed and cheerful.  I remarked to dh that Yirmi is like the emotional barometer of the family; his behavior reflects what everyone else is feeling.

Dd19 said it was a very hard home environment to come into (she came home from the US after 13 months away the day after my accident).  I asked why, and she said that everyone was afraid and tense; at that point none of us knew what the long term repercussions of my burns would be or how long I would be hospitalized  Going to the hotel gave us a chance to move past the immediate trauma of the accident, to unwind and feel taken care of, to have a chance of scenery and being in a different setting that was so pleasant helped us all shift our focus away from the accident.

There were three other families there during that week who we had a chance to get to know; by the end of our stay we asked that our tables be put together for meals.  For the final day of Pesach our four families were given a private dining room and this was really nice – it was a more personal feeling than being in a huge dining room.   The families were all so nice and it was also nice that they were all so glad that we were there.  One of the women told me on the last day what happy children we have, and especially now that was a really gratifying observation to hear from someone who had been seeing our kids close up for the entire week.  

I felt a sense of sadness when we left the hotel and some of my kids did as well.  (When I told ds4 we were going to go home, he insisted that the hotel was now our home, that we had brought our stuff there and he wanted to stay forever!)  It was sad, but a good kind of sad that comes from having had such a nice experience and it coming to an end.  I had such a peaceful Pesach and it was an amazing gift to our entire family to have been able to go away!

Avivah