Gut Moed!

20130922_222440Gut Moed everyone! It has been beautiful over here. The boys have all been able to sleep in the sukkah several nights now, and it looks like they will be able to continue to sleep in it through Yom Tov. Unfortunately, I have not been able to sleep in it for one reason: There is no bed or space for a bed for me! It would have been nice, the fresh air is always so refreshing to wake up too. Perhaps next year. Just one note of caution: Do NOT place a pillow anywhere near a heater that is turned on. You just might find the pillow slipped off the bed and is laying on top of the heater creating a fire. Not a good thing. Just saying. Baruch Hashem, the boy who found it turned the heater off and it just melted the pillow. Life lesson learned – keep heaters FAR away from anything in the sukkah. I told the boys this morning that Hashem was really kind to us for it was just a pillow that melted and had to be thrown out. He was giving us a second chance and we need to learn from it. I do not think we really need the heater at night anyways, not with all the sleeping bags and blankets they use.

The first days were wonderful. Busy, but wonderful. We had guests for many of the meals and went out for a couple. It was decided that instead of finishing up the second sefer of Rambam this weekend, they were going to skip to the sefer on Sukkos. It definitely has been a lot of fun learning about the halachos20130922_140417 of the holiday during the holiday. It was also exciting when we took our old lulav from last year we were able to open it up and understand what the Rambam was talking about. For those that have not looked, if you take a look at the lulav (palm branch), each part of the leaf is actually doubled over and is twice as wide as it looks. Quite interesting. Science learning as part of halacha. 🙂 They even learned that you can have a sukkah on a boat. So, we took them to a sukkah on a boat this year. With chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, building of cookie sukkahs and boys only (with Daddy) pool time, it was a good day and lots of fun.

We usually just do Judaics during Chol Hamoed (the middle days of Sukkos and Pesach/Passover), for it is really still like a Yom Tov, though the boys are sifting through their lego pile now to find all the pieces for Lego Club at Currclick.com. The Lego Club is a free monthly club that the boys can sign up for. They did it a few times at the end of the previous school year, but we have not done it in a few months. Not sure what we are going to do (if anything else) tomorrow, perhaps we will go apple picking. We’ll see.

20130922_141858In the meantime, one boy is making lunch, one boy is cleaning the living room, and one is cleaning the table. Then, I need to go grocery shopping and get a menu ready for the last days! I am going to miss all the Yomim Tovim. There are no more Yomim Tovim until Pesach (not including Chanukah and Purim, which are not real Yomim Tovim for they happened after the Torah). I once heard that all these Yomim Tovim now are supposed to give us the spiritual light to tie us through the dark of the winter months when we get re-jew-venated with Pesach and then Shavuos. I have to20130922_141709 remember to add pretzels and fruit rollups to make edible Torahs for Simchas Torah – both ingredients that I do not usually purchase, but I do occasionally make exceptions. 🙂

Wishing everyone a happy and energizing Shemini Atzeres and Simchas Torah!