Pesach, Pesach iz Shein

One good thing about being such a *procrastinator* is that I still haven't put up many photos from the past half year (like beautiful fall foliage, Adi's birthday party, Sukkos, Chanuka, Purim...) so they didn't disappear with my deleted account.
So with that encouragement, I will begin posting photos again. :D Starting with the most recent and moving on backwards.

Pesach is going pretty well! I had actually gotten a normal amount of sleep on bedikas chometz night. I woke up to a clean and fresh house that smelled like the air after a spring rain. :) It was a perfect moment, with newly shorn boys and freshly bathed children.

The boys went out to the yard to burn chometz and a picture of their yetzer hora that they drew just for this occasion. And in that spirit, they helped me a lot on erev yontif! They brought me things from boxes, put away groceries, peeled vegetables and "chazer'd" the Ma Nishtana so beautifully.


Gedalya nicked a finger while peeling veggies. He's usually the type that freaks at any sight of blood, but this time he was very calm. He said, "It's okay, because Hashem will heal it very fast. The Yidden in Mitzrayim were always being hurt and Hashem helped them and took them out. So any time you get hurt preparing for Pesach, Hashem will heal it right away."

He has all these adorable divrei Torah that he says. On Yom Tov when he wanted milk but was still fleishik, he said, "It's good that Hashem made the halacha not to eat meat and milk together."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because," he replied, "*everything* Hashem does is good." 
(He didn't actually say, "Duh," but I heard it in his tone.)

On the first day of Chol Hamoed, we took a trip to Prospect Park and got together with a bunch of friends. I wasn't going to take Adi. Every time I take her somewhere, I end up vowing never to do anything so crazy again. To add to that, I was sick. On the second day of Pesach I was so sick, I couldn't get out of bed. I was feeling much better in the morning, but still didn't want to deal with Adi. In the end I took her because my husband wasn't able to stay with her at the last minute.

And I was so amazed! She tolerated a half-hour bus ride, 2 hours in one park where she played nicely with other kids and let me socialize, 20 minutes in another park, let me take her out of the swing the first time I asked her, over an hour at the Audubon center where her brothers were creating nature journals (she napped for part of it), a walk by the lake, half an hour wait for the bus, another half hour bus ride, grocery shopping and a 20 minute walk home. ALL OF IT WITHOUT ONE TANTRUM! What did she eat or inhale? Because I'm stocking up on it.

And if anyone out there read any of this, you deserve some photos. :)

First part of the day, Imagination Playground.

Then we went to a playground with swings. After behaving for two hours and letting Mama play with her friends, Adi deserved swinging time. :) She's signing "help" for me to push her.

Our next stop was the Audubon Center. It was totally unplanned, and since I hadn't packed much food, we weren't planning on staying long. But we ended up staying for over an hour!

Digital magnifier.

Bird migration paths.

The reason we stayed soooo long was that the boys wanted to make nature journals. There were four stations to go to, and each one took a long time.
At this station, you have to find and sketch an animal. (Some of the other stations were learning to use a field guide to identify plants they laid out on the table and finding birds using binoculars and identifying them.)

Some of the stations were upstairs, and I didn't want to let Adi loose. So I let the boys go up by themselves. Sometimes Id go up to check on them, staying on the part of the stairs where I could still see Adi.

 My phone took this photo by itself. Pretty cool, huh?

Looking through their nature journals.

A pocket full of posies! The white flowers smelled like heaven.

 Back in our neighborhood. Gedalya was marveling at that tree behind him, and then noticed some blooms had fallen off. He gathered them, and did what he saw some of my friends do that morning... put them behind their ears. :)

 The quality of some of these pics isn't the best because they are cell phone photos. Here I was using the front-facing camera of my phone so Gedalya can see himself while I photograph. That made him smile!

A happy rest of yom tov to everyone... hope to post more very soon!