October 21 2012

Celebrate the trees!

Today, Josh very generously took ALL the kids to the arboretum here in Boston. (More properly called the "Arnold Arboretum"). It's considered Boston's "tree museum" and we figured that the gorgeous weather, autumn foliage (couldn't finish this post without once using that word 'foliage', right?) and scooters would be a nice outing, despite the murmurs from the boys in the morning about how great it would be to go to LaserTag today....

Anyway, the kids all had fun (and their mom had a relaxing few hours during which Josh forbade me from doing any housework). The boys tried to video themselves all falling on their scooters onto grass, while Avishai continuously yelled "Earthquake!!" at random times during all the video footage. Talya was happy to be outside and Hila was excited to be re-united with her purple helmet ... in fact, she insisted upon wearing it in the car on the way there as well, just in case ;)

The kids' morning activity. Ariel and Adin arranged a magnifying
glass to put some cheerios on fire.  Avishai protects
himself from "fumes" and I stationed Talya there to supervise :)

October 2012

Hila's Fourth Birthday!

We've come a long way from last year's birthday, during which, Hila covered her face with her hands whenever she heard the song "Happy Birthday". This year, there was a bit of trepidation and a complete refusal to have any school celebration, but she did happily agree to have a family party and threw in a "with presents, right?" comment as well.

The morning began with balloons on her bed to awaken her, and some fancy girly cake pops in carpool on the way to school.

After school, we had a little birthday cake in the succah followed by a visit to our nearby kosher pizza place to eat sushi (her favorite) and pizza in their succah.

Hlia insists on helping hang more pink streamers

Hila sets up the table in our succa for birthday cake.

Hila demonstrates her method of eating sushi. Remove all the
"innards", place them on a plate for Mommy, and then
enjoy the rice/seaweed portion. She is pointing to the empty
sushi rolls she's set up for herself.

We then returned home for a couple of presents. Hila was so excited to "read' the emails and retrieve the phone calls and voice messages left by all her family in Canada and Israel! She also was given a private concert by Avishai, who has recently learned how to play "Happy Birthday" on the keyboard. 

Thank you, Sabi and Savti, for "sponsoring" Hila's new favorite
kitchen accessories! She loves them!

Thank you, Zaidy and Butsy, for the great little house that
Hila is now using for her little rabbit toy family! Hila and the
rabbits are all very pleased with the new accomodations!

  Hila happens to love playing at her toy kitchen and asking whoever is nearby for "What would you like? I have french fries with dressing and sushi and chocolate milk. Is that good?" Her brothers were adorable at opening the packages and setting it up for her, and enthusiastically "ate" the plastic food that was served to them :)

Adin saved up tickets at school to trade in for a  "Hello Kitty" purse that he gave to her on her Hebrew Birthday. (Thank you, Pomper cousins, for the pink shabbat dress - recognize it?)

Thank you, Hashem, for such a wonderful, kind, funny and helpful girly girl! Ad Me'ah Viesrim Shana!

Succot 2012

Succot in Boston,  Chutz LaAretz, is not quite comparable to the incredible holiday in Israel, but we enjoyed the moments that we had between rainstorms :)

I returned from the pizza store to find the boys had assembled the main
frame of the succah with only a little help from Abba! Well done!

We had lots of fun preparing our succa this year despite the rain ALL weekend long. Ariel finally was allowed to use his long-fostered love of.....spray paint! We got white sheets for each child and a bunch of different paint colors and the kids got creative with their designs. Hila became a bit obsessed with avoiding spray paint in her eyes, despite the swim goggles that she wore, and would only dare to direct my hand with the can and choose the colours. (Her ophthalmologist father may have had something to do with that anxiety, I'd think).

Adin's artwork. "Warning: Do not break pitom"

Yes, it says "Happy Spray" on the bottom...
Shall we blame the fumes?

Please note swim goggles for eye protection!

Then we worked on the dessert and activity. Many failed attempts at locating and creating pareve yellow candy melts meant that our cake pops ended up being green etrogim instead (kinda like the ones we used to buy in Israel). The chocolate chip is supposed to be the pitom...not the greatest cosmetic results but they tasted good so I had no complaints.

Hila needed some time to spend indoors away from the paint fumes, so she decorated a mini-sukkah with me. There were copious amounts of white glue used, so it was not surprising that the sukkah was a bit difficult to remove from the dining room table at first try :)  A gumball dispenser from our nearby thrift shop was hidden inside and dispensed yellow candy balls ("etrogim") when the kids answered three succot-related questions correctly at dinner. They opened the little front door and turned the handle and were rewarded with the candies at the bottom.


Demonstrating the hidden dispenser