My little prodigies

Feivel, Gilad, and Adele are playing dreidel, having eaten their fill of latkes (served with chickpeas and green beans and rice and salad, this being our house after all). Oh, and of course brownies. On Feivel's first spin he got a "hay" ה which means he's supposed to get half of what's in the center. Gilad glanced at the pile of pennies and announced to Feivel that he should get six pennies. Sure enough, there were 12 total.
Then Adele spun, and proudly announced that she too had gotten a "hay" and sure enough she had.

We Didn't Have Latkes Last Night

That is because Kayla came home from school with a broken wrist and I had to take her to the urgent care center, where they splinted it.  Now this afternoon she just got it fully casted at the orthopedist.

This morning I dropped Addie off at day care, went out to my car, and it wouldn't start.  Nothing.  Jeffrey came over to the day care provider's house to help, and we got it started briefly but then nothing again.  We wound up having to call AAA, getting a jump start, and then I drove straight to the dealer (because it turns out that Saturn Ions have a unique, placed-in-the-back-trunk battery which can't be replaced by mobile crews, it's a dealer part), where they diagnosed a dead starter as well as a very marginal battery.  In truth, though, at least it happened on a quiet day when everyone was pretty much able to get where they were going and be safe and all is well except our wallets.  Plus, sitting at the dealership I was able to finish the baby sweater for our next-door neighbor's new baby (pics to come later when it's dry).

When I got in to the office finally after dealing with the car repair, it turned out our VPN was down and there was no fix in sight.  After sitting around for over an hour, I gave up and went home (at the suggestion of both of my bosses).

On the very happy side of things, I found a nice gift (set of gifts in fact) for my father's birthday, but I'm not going to show anyone or give any more details in case he reads this before next week!

So tonight we will have latkes and sufganiyot (jelly donuts).  Yum, yum, yum, happy chanukah!

It's not Monday. No. It isn't.

Sunday evening not only was I staggering around I was so tired, but I couldn't even account for several hours out of the day.

We went to Mom and Dad's to celebrate Tirtze's birthday and to see Grandma who's in the process of moving to a retirement home down here. The kids all got their Chanuka gifts since we probably won't see Mom and Dad next weekend (iPod for Tirtze as a combined gift, fake Ugggs for Kayla, Pokemon cards for the boys, toys for the 2 little ones).

I stole a couple of photos from Mom to scan in. Now I'll have a pic of Josie to illustrate any and all posts about Dora (she's even wearing her sweatshirt with the big Superman "D" on the front--you know, SuperDora), plus one of Herbie just 'cause he's cute.

Feivel had his first 5th grade basketball team practice. We'll see just how this goes...he's not the only kid on the team from the special ed program, at least. He also had a boy scout meeting and felt very proud that he already knew a lot of what they went over, thanks to working with Jeffrey.