Monthly Archives: April 2009

Dandelions for your health

gardening, nutrition

Until last June, I never knew that dandelions were edible.  Did you?  Not only are they edible, they’re an incredible source of nutrition.  Read here if you want more details of how wonderful they are for you: http://www.leaflady.org/health_benefits_of_dandelions.htm

Different parts of the dandelion are good for eating at different times.  The best time to eat the leaves is before they flower, when they start to get bitter.  You can deal with the bitterness by boiling them, rinsing them, and then boiling them again, which is what I did last year.  But it’s better to just pick them when they are young and tasty.

This morning I sent the kids out to pick dandelion flowers.  I have a neighbor who has tons of them in her yard, so they got quite a few. It didn’t look like so many at first, since they are so small and compact, but it was a lot.  I have several experiments I want to try with them, only one of which we made today.  One is dandelion flower fritters – that was part of today’s lunch – another is dandelion bread and dandelion quiche.  For the bread, you need to separate the petals, so dd8 and ds10 spent quite a while doing the petals. 

I’d like to tell you how amazingly delicious the fritters were, but they honestly weren’t such a big hit.  It’s not a hard thing to make – you basically dip the flower in the batter, drop it in hot oil, and quickly fry it.  I think the lack of success had more to do with the fact that the batter for the fritters was too heavy than anything else (if we make it again we’ll use less flour), and the heaviness of the batter also meant that they took much longer to cook than they should have and it was labor and time intensive.  I left dd14 to make them while I went with dd12 to the thrift store to do some emergency clothing shopping.  (Do you remember me mentioning a child I have who rips pants within the first time or two wearing them?  Well, he has a unique gift and I can’t figure out how it’s possible for a child to so quickly destroy clothing, but he does this with all of his clothing – socks have holes within a couple of wearings, he came home from a friend last Shabbos with a borrowed shirt because as he walked by a door it got caught and literally ripped every button off his new shirt, and now he has worn holes through the bottom of his shoes – not one other child of mine has ever accomplished this, and since the first I knew of it was when he showed me how he could poke his toes through, I needed to buy replacements right away.  🙂 Anyway.)  If I had been here I might have realized in time that the batter was too thick and avoided the problem, but in any event, I wasn’t and I didn’t.  I think the fritters could be very tasty and maybe we’ll try again.  I love the idea of being able to forage for high quality nutritious food right outside of our doors. 

Tonight I told a friend I could send over my two oldest daughters to help her tomorrow with the cooking for Shabbos meals for all of her visiting family (she’s making a bar mitzva this weekend), so I won’t have them around much to help here for Shabbos.  I was thinking of making the dandelion bread for Shabbos breakfast, but now I’ll see if I’ll have the time.  The basic idea for that is to use the flower petals the way you would add banana or zucchini to a quick loaf recipe.  For the quiche, I think it would work nicely to use the petals and or the greens, sauteed with garlic, and add it to a typical quiche filling. 

One of my kids asked if we could dehydrate the flowers and them blend them into a flour.  I thought that was a good idea, and maybe we’ll try that.  It would make it very easy to cook with, adding a sprinkle of some here and there.  Dandelions are such a good source of vitamins, free and easily available, that it seems worth a little time to play around with how to best use them. 

Avivah

How to find farm fresh eggs

frugal strategies

I mentioned in response to the concern about using raw eggs in the Pesach ice cream recipe that we try to use eggs that are from the farmer whenever we can (not always), but realize that it sounds like a foreign idea to a lot of people.  Free range eggs are much higher in nutritional value, and though you can find them in the health food store, they tend to be pricey.  Don’t think that eating well means paying high prices.  Sometimes it does and it’s often worth it, but it doesn’t have to be significantly more than the regular eggs you buy.

 I was able to find farm fresh eggs from the dairy farmer that I get our raw milk from – they have neighbors who provide the eggs for sale and bring the eggs to the little one room ‘store’ where the milk is sold.  Then I found an Amish store that sells what looks like regular eggs, but I found out that the eggs are provided by different Amish workers from their private farms.  None of these eggs are expensive – they’re about the same price as regular eggs in the store.  I’ve also seen signs when driving through rural areas ‘Eggs for sale’, though I’ve never stopped to buy because I already have sources I’m happy with.  In fact, just today I saw a sign I never noticed before for fresh eggs for $1 a dozen (I had already bought my eggs or I would have stopped to buy them here – next time!), and today I also noticed someone who had a large number of chickens in their backyard – so I made a mental note of the address in case I ever wanted to ask them about if they sell their eggs.

Another option is to look on Craig’s List.  I’ve seen people advertising their farm fresh eggs a number of times, usually priced from $2 – $4 a dozen.  Look in the ‘farm/garden’ section to see what your local options are.  You can also visit a farmer’s market and chat with the people selling there to find out about local options.  More and more people across the country are raising chickens in their own backyards (did you know even in many urban areas, it’s legal to raise chicken? – in our city, I’d be allowed to have four), people who aren’t officially farming but have eggs that they might be willing to sell or barter for.   I know someone just a few minutes away from me, in the same semi-urban neighborhood I live in, who has a few chickens.  I’m sure I could buy eggs from her. 

My daughters volunteered for three years at a small hobby farm that had chickens, and the woman there sold the eggs on a small scale basis.  The people who bought from her all heard about her through word of mouth; she didn’t do any advertising of any sort.  My girls at one point each had a chicken that they were raising on that farm, and when we decided they needed to sell their chickens, we met another local woman who purchased them.  She’s just a fifteen minute drive from our neighborhood, and also has chickens; I asked her if she sells the eggs, and she said she did.  

So there are lots of good options to buying from the health food store, and eating these eggs raw shouldn’t pose a health concern!

Avivah

Today’s shopping and outing

homemaking

I have had a long and exhausing day, and I am totally wiped out!  (It doesn’t help that I had a terrible night’s sleep last night – which came from trying to go to bed earlier than usual and tossing and turning all night long.)  My day started with a 7 am visit with my midwife.  I really appreciate that she does home visits; it simplifies my life so much.  I asked her about her thoughts on group B strep and will try to share her response when I’m not so tired, but basically she’s not concerned that it’s an issue for me.  She also was able to tell me that the baby is no longer in a posterior position, which is nice to know since though babies come in all different ways, generally a posterior labor tends to be harder and longer.   

Then I did my monthly shopping – I haven’t been for 7 weeks, and I’m so glad to now be stocked up before giving birth.  My wonderful dh rearranged his work schedule so he could come with me – he knew I was a little apprehensive about being so far from home with the kids so close to my due date, and it gave me a lot of peace of mind that he was there just in case (and you know how once you’re prepared for a situation, then what you were prepared for never ends up happening? :)). This was the first time that my dh has ever gone with us, though I’ve been doing bulk shopping like this for a very long time now, and I appreciated that he got a sense of what’s involved in doing this.   

I keep passing personal mental milestones – first was getting past the three weeks early mark when the last baby was born, then 2 weeks from another baby, then today was 10 days (yet another baby) – and I’ve gotten through all of the guests that I invited for yom tov and Shabbos and just have to make it to a couple of bar mitzvas (or at least the one tomorrow night), and then I’m home free.  🙂  At this point I actually think I could make it to my due date or even past it, something I could only hope for a few weeks ago!  Tonight someone called about coming for dinner Friday night, and as much as I hated to say no, I really want to be able to relax and not worry about if I go into labor or not.  I’m not in a rush one way or another – as one of my kids who has been very excited about a new baby said to me yesterday, ‘when it was further away it was harder to wait, but now that we’re so close to the due date, you know it will be sometime soon so it doesn’t matter so much if the baby is born this week or next’. 

We had a really nice day – lots of food shopping, which isn’t majorly exciting, but my kids are pretty unspoiled and I generally get them some kind of treat while they’re out (today I said they could each spend .50 on whatever they wanted – big spender, aren’t I?  lol – but it goes far enough in discount grocery stores for them to enjoy it).  On the way home we stopped at a living history museum.  We didn’t spend long there because it was so close to closing time, but it was enough time for everyone to run around for a while, feed some horses, climb around the playground – maybe an hour or so.  My two littlest ones stayed with their grandparents, which was a nice break for the rest of us (my 19 month old literally doesn’t stop moving from one thing to another all day long, and constantly needs to be watched – he takes a tremendous amount of energy to keep up with).  But absence makes the heart grow fonder, and after a few hours away, they were both cuter to us all then ever! 

Tomorrow we’ll hopefully get the bulk foods put away in their places and then we’ll be set.  My kids are hoping that I’ll take them to a park, and if they can get their academic work done and finish up with the unpacking before the day gets too late, then I’ll be happy to do that!

Avivah

Why do I homeschool?

homeschooling,

Can I ask one more question? Why do you homeschool? What is the financial, hashkafic, halachic reasoning behind such an unorthodox choice for a family that seems (from your bio) to be pretty normal? I am dying to know.

This isn’t a short answer, but I’ll try to be as succinct as I can without leaving out the major factors.

I didn’t set out to homeschool – Hashem kind of led me to it and I feel unbelievably blessed that He did.  When I moved from Israel in August 2000 (my husband had been offered a position as a shul rabbi so we moved to Seattle for that), my oldest was in second grade and struggled because the secular subjects required reading and writing skills that he didn’t yet have, and his Judaic skills were much more advanced than his classmates.

We brought him home for half a day with the intent to bring him up to par in secular subjects – I did it out of desperation, because he was so stressed out that it was affecting the entire family, and nothing else I was doing was helping.  (This was one of the worst periods of my life, which has shown me how often the best things come from the most difficult situations.)  I didn’t know anything about homeschooling, and didn’t consider myself to be homeschooling him.  I was just tutoring him at home.  The principals and teachers were very supportive of me doing this, because they knew they didn’t have the ability to help him catch up.

Despite the many obstacles (like not knowing what I was doing and constantly doubting and second guessing myself), he thrived and we achieved our goals for him. Along the way he became much happier and more relaxed, which positively affected everyone.

We put him back into school for the full day about three or four months later with no intent to bring him back home.  But then we started to see behaviors we hadn’t seen for a long time that were attributable to nothing but being in school, behaviors that were subtle and everyone would say were normal.  In the past we thought it was because he didn’t yet have friends after moving there, was pressured academically, felt the strain of a major move, etc.  But now he was doing great academically in all his classes, socially fine, the family had settled down, and life was all around positive and relaxed – there was absolutely nothing wrong.  And I saw that school actually created a kind of tension in children, even a child who was succeeding, something I never would have recognized if it hadn’t been totally absent from him for so long.

For the next few months, I thought about the significance of this.  I thought about what it would be like to have all the kids at home (if it was such a big improvement with one child home just half a day, imagine if everyone were home all day!), without the school induced pressures of carpool, tuition, mandatory parent service hours, and constantly worrying about keeping up with exactly what the school was up to, all issues I had to deal with when he was home for half a day.

What if we didn’t have to rush everyone to bed so that they could get up on time the next day, what if I could relax through our morning routine instead of rushing to get them to school on time; what if my primary goal wasn’t school centered but values centered?

I had by now started reading a lot about homeschooling philosophies, educational models, and thinking very seriously about what it all meant to me and where I stood.  I was working through some very major ideas about where parenting and education met, and my role in that.  I thought a lot about the kind of children I wanted to raise, the qualities I wanted to help them develop, and in what environment those would best be nurtured.  I strongly felt homeschooling would help us best meet those goals, though I had no idea how right I was.

But I was scared.  I was a conservative kind of person, someone who was very much part of the mainstream, who was comfortable being part of the mainstream and in fact found security in being clearly identifiable as being mainstream.  I didn’t want to be different from everyone else.  I didn’t want to listen to my conscience.

Not only that, my kids were all doing great in school – there were no behavior issues, academic issues, social issues – nothing.  And the following year all three of them were going to have the most experienced teachers in the school, teachers who were so good that people would actually switch their kids for the year to this school to have these teachers.  Who in their right mind would take out their kids at a time like this?

But the problem was, I was trying to live my life with integrity and I couldn’t silence the voice inside me that kept telling me that this was a change I should make, that even as seemingly successful as the kids were, that there was more they could be than model students.  I couldn’t ignore what I really believed was best.

I had two discussions at this time about this that gave me the support I needed to make the leap to homeschooling, one with my husband, and one with the wife of the rosh kollel of that area, and with both I expressed my fears and feelings of inadequacy.  My husband told me that no matter how wonderful the teachers were, he was confident that I could do just as well.  The rosh kollel’s wife, when I told her my fears of appearing non mainstream and not being like everyone else, said, “Who cares what people think?”  These two conversations gave me the final boost I needed to do to begin to live out my vision.

It was making the decision to homeschool that was the hardest thing. But since then, I’ve never looked back.  It was clear from the very beginning that it was the right thing for our family – there were so many advantages that I can’t begin to express them here.  I had the advantage of knowing what life with kids in school was like, and it was very easy to compare and contrast that to homeschooling.

Life with kids in school is a pale (and stressful!) comparison to a homeschooled life.   Though people have told us that because we’re such good parents our kids would have been great anyway, I know it’s not true and they’re making false assumptions.  I’m not an amazing or unusually good parent.  But homeschooling my kids and the time it’s given us together has been the factor that has made all of the difference.

To go back to the original question, there were no negative factors – tuition was affordable for us (I’ve never felt that finances alone were a reason to homeschool), the kids were successful in school (and I was happy with the school), and I had a great rapport with the administration.  I don’t have a bone to pick with schools, not then and not now.  Choosing to homeschool wasn’t coming from negative motivations, but rather from a strong philosophical belief that it was the best thing for my children, to educate each of them according to their individual needs and personalities (‘chanoch l’naar al pi darko’).

I didn’t and don’t believe that a one size fits all institution with hired workers can know and understand a child and their needs (crucial to effectively educating them) as well as a loving and motivated parent.  I felt that building a strong family would happen most effectively when the family had ample time to spend together in a relaxed way, not pulled in lots of directions all day long, every day, with everyone coming together at the end when they were tired and uptight.  And there were lots of other more specific concerns about education and child raising that I had.

As the years have gone by, my belief about all of these things has only gotten stronger. I’m at the beautiful place in life where I don’t have to wonder if this homeschooling business was all a major mistake on my part and what will all come out from it in the end. I’ve been so fortunate to have seen the things I trusted to happen, happen, beyond what I ever hoped for.  Is life perfect?  No.  Are my kids perfect?  Obviously not.  And me?  You all know I’m not perfect by now!  🙂

But I can’t tell you how incredibly grateful I feel every single day for the life I’m privileged to have with my family.  I don’t take it for granted because I hear and see from all that goes on around me how special what we have is.

Avivah

Replacing sink faucet

frugal strategies

My sink faucet has been loose for a while, resulting in slight leaking into the cabinet below, which was annoying but manageable since I put a dishpan there to catch the water.  Recently the top of the faucet started coming off when we turned the water on – I think it was a little disconcerting for a couple of guests to turn it on with the intent to fill up the washing cup, and have a piece of it end up in their hands!  So the time to replace it had finally come. 

Dh bought a replacement for it, but as you might have realized, he has more things to do around here than time to do them!  So the replacement faucet has been sitting on top of the computer for over a month, waiting to be replaced.  Today dh took care of it, and the kids learned some new home repair skills in the process.  We’re an equal opportunity home – boys and girls get to learn useful skills, regardless of what gender traditionally performs them – girls have learned to drywall and cut tile, and boys cook and do dishes. 

Today dh and ds15 wrestled the old sink out – part of the piece below the sink had rusted and what should have been a quick and easy repair job became very time consuming and laborious.  Once they got the hacksaw out and cut through the metal pipe, the rest went quickly.  Dd12 put in the new faucet once the old one was out of the way.  It’s a nice feeling of accomplishment for her, to have done it herself and to see the very visual difference. 

Once again, being willing to learn to take care of our own repairs has saved us a bundle, while simultaneously teaching our children practical skills that will stand them in good stead!  Now, on to the next project….

Avivah 

How to make newspaper pots

frugal strategies, gardening

Today’s project was making newspaper pots to start some vegetable seeds in.  Last year I saved all of the containers that the vegetable starts I bought came in, but those got used up very quickly.  I saw in a catalog a special gadget that you use as a mold to make small newspaper pots with, but I wasn’t interested in spending $15 on it.  You can buy peat pots in the gardening store that are also biodegradable, but those cost money, too.  And I’m trying to be as frugal as I can in doing this gardening – you’d be amazed how easy it is to spend a lot of money on various aspects of a garden. 

Then I stumbled upon a way to make pots from newspapers for planting in without needing a mold.  What’s really nice about this idea of making pots from newspapers is it uses something free and truly recycles it!  Once the seeds have sprouted and are ready to transplant into your garden, you can plant the entire thing in the ground.  That’s better for the plants, because it’s easier for them to adapt than to be taken from the containers they’re in and then transplanted, and it’s less work for you! 

Here’s the way we were planning to do it:  http://www.geocities.com/newspaperpots/.  But then when I was ready to show the kids the instructions, the site was down.  They already had the newspaper out and were geared up to make them, so I quickly created a new plan.  I suggested they roll them in a circle, about the size of a juice can, and then fold the bottoms in.  I didn’t know if it would work but figured it was worth a try.  At first their pots were falling apart, but then they realized they needed to use a larger piece of newspaper so that the bulk helped hold it together.  They took one regular sized sheet of newspaper, folded it in half, then folded it in half again.  Then they rolled it, and folded the bottom in the way you would package a present, folding the bottom four times, working their way around in a circle. 

When they finished, they put each pot into a used aluminum 9 x 13 pan.  I saved a plastic cover for this pan, and will use it as a mini greenhouse for the plants we start.  We’re planning to start eggplants and peppers in these, since we’ve already started tomatoes and rhubarb.  But maybe I should do some more tomatoes, too.  Can you have too many tomatoes?  Hmm.  I’ll have to think about it. 

Anyway, whatever you decide you want to plant, these pots are quick and easy to make, and it’s a nice hands on project for the kids. 

Avivah

Getting the cool weather seeds planted

gardening

Today we did some cool weather planting.  Before Pesach we put in the strawberry plants and started lettuce – otherwise, the only things there are some garlic, leek, and onion that have been there over the winter.  The lettuce has started coming up in the garden bed as well as one of the planters that they were planted in.  One of the planters didn’t drain properly, so I think everything in that one must have drowned from sitting in so much water after the heavy rain we had on yom tov.

There are two times for planting – the spring (cool weather crops), and then the summer (warm weather crops), and then you can plant the cool weather seeds again in the fall when it’s cool.  Last year I didn’t start thinking about a garden until the very end of May, so I totally missed the timeline for the cool weather crops (and when the fall came I was still pretty uneducated so I missed the chance again :)).  This year I’m fortunately a little more aware of planting timelines than I was last year!  The things that can be planted now should be finished by the time the summer plants/ seeds are ready to go in the ground, so it’s a good use of garden space to double up – I think it’s called succession planting.

Today we turned over the ground in the raised beds to loosen the soil and pulled up any weeds that sprouted since the summer.  Then we planted garden peas, snow peas, turnips, beets, spinach, and mesclun greens.  I was a little lackadaisical about how I planted the spinach – bending over for so long wasn’t so comfortable (that’s the reality of being a week away from my due date!), so I sprinkled them haphazardly around and stirred some dirt over them.  I’m not so optimistic about their chances for success.  It’s a good thing my kids planted more carefully than me!

Since this is our first time planting spring vegetables, it will be interesting to see what comes up in the next couple of months.  I wanted to get these seeds in before Pesach but it would have been too much of a rush, and as I’ve said before, I don’t like the pressure that comes with rushing.  I want my kids to have positive associations of the things we do together, even the work, and that would be pretty hard if I was tense and stressed out!

Today the weather was beautiful, and we all enjoyed working outside together.  As I looked around my yard this afternoon, I was thinking how much more I wanted to do as far as preparing more lasagna beds for the summer planting, and creating mulched paths between the beds because it gives such a nice tidy look to the yard!  I’d still like to have that, but unless in the next couple of days I can muster up the energy and enthusiasm to do some major work (driving back and forth loading lots of compost and mulch, unloading, going back for more….), that’s going to have to wait until the fall.

Have you ever felt like moving slower than usual and being mellow? That’s how I’m feeling right now, and I’m not mentally geared up for rushing around in the next couple of days.  I’m glad to have gotten these seeds in the ground, and also to have cleaned up the back deck of all those things that accumulated over the winter.  At this point, the main thing I want to accomplish this week is my monthly shopping so that I know we’re stocked up for food for the next 5 – 7 weeks, and that’s a full two day project (one day of shopping, one day of organizing to put everything away).  (I initially planned to go on Friday, right after Pesach, but it seemed like too much of a rush, so I’ll go this Wednesday instead when my bulk order is ready to be picked up.)

I find it helpful to balance busy and slow periods – when I do, I can enjoy the busy times and enjoy feeling accomplished, but not get overwhelmed.  After the intense busyness of the Pesach season, it’s a good time for all Jewish women to relax a little and enjoy the feel of spring in the air. 🙂

Avivah

Thinking about career options for ds

homeschooling

Today we had a lovely lunch meal with our shul president and his wife.  They had us over to their house three years ago, and it took me until now to get around to inviting them!  They are such nice people, and it was an absolute pleasure to have them.

One of the many things we discussed was my very tentative plans for my ds15 for the coming year.  We have tentative plans for my dd14 that she feels good about, assuming the program that she’s interested will accept her in the fall even though she’s so young.  If they won’t take her now, we’ll either wait another year until they will or reassess and make another plan.  But ds is a little harder.  He’d like to go to yeshiva when he’s 18, which we’re supportive of, but it’s important to us that he has a solid way to support a family when he’s married.  So I’d like him to be able to use the next couple of years to work towards a long term plan, but all the ideas I’ve come up with have left me unenthusiastic.  This has been something I’ve spent a lot of mental energy on, but haven’t gotten too close to making any decisions.  I’ve looked into trade schools, apprenticeships, community college options, dual enrollment choices, and spoken with him about some career choices.  And so far none of them match his interests, learning style, or long term goals – so far accounting is the main option and a lukewarm choice.  I told my dh that he needs to get involved in actively thinking about this because it’s too much for me to figure out on my own! 🙂

The husband has a personality and learning style similar to my son, so he right away understood what I was expressing about what we were looking for and my concerns about a typical college path for him (very bright, hands on, motivated independent learner but not academic in the classroom – which is why I’m looking for alternatives to the typical college path).  He came up with a possible apprenticeship option and offered to call the person involved, and also thought of an idea for a short term work position for him.  Ds thought both of them were interesting.  Because it was Shabbos, we didn’t discuss any of this in detail, but I’ll follow up in the next couple of days and see what’s a possibility for ds. 

Speaking with them made me think how important networking and speaking to others is, because they have other experiences and ideas that I wouldn’t have considered.   That sounds obvious, but I haven’t really been speaking with people about this. 

We also discussed our community initiative to keep charity dollars in the community, with a certain amount going to the schools. I was initially positive about this, until I saw that a large percentage of the money being kept in the community was expected to be allocated to the schools.  I won’t make that kind of commitment – I gladly will allot the vast portion of our maaser (tithe)  money to our community (and already do), but there are causes much closer to my heart than the local schools.  Actually, they are almost at the bottom of my list. 

Anyway, the husband had the same feeling about this initiative that I did – that there’s no discussion about new ways to approach the financial crisis that the schools are experiencing.  Calls for people in the community to give more money aren’t going to be very effective, in my opinion – I don’t think that the money is sitting around and waiting to be allocated to the schools.  But it seems no one wants to take an honest look at what the situation is, and to realize that only creative and new ways of thinking about it are going to change the status quo. 

It reminds me of when a local teen died in a car accident this past summer, and there was so much talk about what the schools could do to help kids who were feeling disenfranchised by the school system. But when I asked one of the leading rabbis who was involved in all this some specific questions about what was being done, he told me that suggestions like mine were too radical to be considered.  Maybe something has happened as a result, but whatever it was, it wasn’t big enough to be noticeable by the average person.  All the talk then was just more of the same old, same old, and now I’m sensing the same dynamic.   

But this doesn’t bother me very much, because I don’t expect the changes to come from the top.  Generally I think they have to maintain the communal equilibrium and are forced to make very small changes – that’s the most they can do because they can’t throw big changes onto the community. I believe that real change can only come from the bottom up, one family at a time.  That’s why all of this ties into my thoughts about my ds right now.  Every time one family makes a choice that works effectively for them – like homeschooling, teaching their children life skills, etc – that indirectly has an effect.  And it’s when there are enough people who are willing to do what they need to do, regardless of if it’s what everyone else is doing, that the financial situation the schools are faced with will be resolved. 

Avivah

Organizing the garage

homemaking

Friday ended up being a day with a lot accomplished, but none of it what I was originally planning!  I wanted to get a bunch of gardening related stuff done, but realized my dh was feeling a bit swamped by all the home repair type projects waiting for his attention.  So I thought that I’d try to give him a bit of a boost by applying myself and the kids to his list. 

I did get ds10 to mow the yard, which was the only thing on my list done.  But the garage is such a disorganized disaster that getting it out of there was a big deal.  (Organizing the garage was on dh’s list.)  Ds15 took a lot of initiative in getting it into shape – there was a huge pile on the yard where he pulled everything out so that there was room to move and rearrange things.  Then he did something I suggested almost three years ago when we moved in – he built supports that use the space above.  Now all the sukka boards and schach are up there, and that freed up lots of space below.  I enjoy finding ways to use ‘dead’ space effectively!

I was shocked at what a disaster the garage was – it’s not my jurisdiction, and I very rarely go in.  I send kids to get things from there or put things in, but it’s been over six months since I set foot in it myself.  It was definitely a good thing that I didn’t know how bad it was.  So hopefully now finding tools and supplies will be much easier than it has been for quite a while.  Just in time for the summer, which is when you need things from the garage the most!

I spent a couple of hours out there organizing, but when dh came out to the garage and joined ds15 and his younger siblings who were enjoying helping out (ds10, dd8, ds6), I headed inside for a nap.  I was pretty wiped out.  My dh’s sister came to visit an hour before Shabbos with her two daughters, which wasn’t exactly the most convenient time, but I slept through their visit.  (Being in the middle of the ninth month is a good excuse because no one can be insulted by that. :))  Everyone else made themselves available to chat with them, though, except for ds15, who was hard at work until the last minute.

It was so nice to be able to get this done and I was very appreciative to my dd14 and dd12 for handling everything related to Shabbos preparations.  Most of the food was in the freezer, which simplified things, but you know how there’s always plenty to do except for that! 

Avivah

Turning over from Pesach

homemaking

Well, the Pesach things are packed and the boxes are waiting to be put into the garage (need daylight for that!), and the kitchen is basically back to normal.  Actually, I think it always looks better than normal right after we turn over, since every surface is so clean and clear!

I was visiting a friend at the end of yom tov, and we got to see their family kick into high gear as soon as yom tov ended.  I enjoyed seeing her husband and his three visiting adult brothers go into action – wow!  They really were some team.  They said they grew up doing it, so now it’s automatic for them.  I told my kids to watch them and get some inspiration since they made it look fun, but as my kids watched how fast everything was getting done, a couple of them said it was kind of discouraging because it wouldn’t be like that in our house.  I commented to my friend about this, and she said they do something special at the end of it all that everyone looks forward to.  We do that when we turn the kitchen over for Pesach, but not when we turn it back over for chometz, and I thought that was a great idea.

My kids did a great job working together – everyone over the age of 6 stayed up (the 6 and 8 year olds by request, the ten year old because I told him he had to :)) to help.  My main job was reading to the three year old and putting him to sleep, then supervising everyone and making notes to include on the boxes for next year.  (I did more later on when the kids had finished their work.)  My dh was able to help out for a while before he had to go to sleep – he has to leave for work very early in the morning, and wouldn’t have gotten a decent amount of sleep even if he hadn’t helped out, so I really appreciate him taking time he didn’t have to pitch in.  Right before he went to sleep, he got a call from my friend, informing him that she ordered pizza for us and the pizzas were on the way!

Wasn’t that amazingly sweet of her to think of us!  I’m sure she was thinking it would be something nice for my kids at the end of the night, and it was.  There was some time between when I told my kids about the call and when the pizza arrived (apparently there was a very long line at the pizza store), and boy, did that give them all a second wind to keep going!  They really enjoyed it, and though the night ended very late for everyone (they went to sleep about a half hour ago, and it’s 2 am now), it ended with a good feeling from everyone.

I’m so glad that we have a decent amount of food in the freezer to make tomorrow a more relaxed day, especially since we have guests coming for Shabbos lunch.  It could too easily feel like non stop cooking and preparing if we didn’t have so much done.  I also have a bunch of things I want to accomplish outside of the kitchen (mostly related to preparing the garden and cleaning up the yard) but I have to see how everyone is doing in the morning, since I don’t want anyone to feel overloaded.  I’ve told them all to sleep in as late as they want, but my ds10 and ds15 are unlikely to, as they go to minyan together every morning, and haven’t missed a morning in six months, regardless of what kind of weather they’ve had to walk in!  So the two of them will end up needing naps when they get home, I think!

Wishing everyone a day of serenity and positivity!

Avivah