Purim Has Come And Gone.....

Purim is probably the most fun and exhausting day on the calendar. The costumes, the mishloach manot (creative food baskets), the shul (syngogue) dinners and parties, friends and families getting together.... Sharing their favorite and least favorite (for those mean people like me) mishloach manot with their friends and family. Not only was making our MM (for short) exhausting. But delivering them was too. And I only did half of them! Jon and the kids did a bunch in the morning.

I was never able to stay home before. I am usually the one dragging all my kids to shul and then to deliver all the stuff, while Jon is at work. This year I got to be home in the morning while they delivered some, and you know what? I kinda like to be home and chat with my friends who stop by with their MM. It is a lot of fun when you are home to accept them, instead of coming home to a crazy amount of packages by the front door.

I forgot to take a picture of my favorite MM. I usually like to do that. Oh well. But my favorite one was made by my friend Lindsey. It was an under the sea theme. A plastic fish bowl filled with fruity pebbles on the bottom. Some gummy fish "swimming" and a net with a little mermaid cookie, a starfish, and not sure what else.... and a picture of her daughters dressed up as ariel and sleeping beauty. She wrote a poem and stuck that in too. The presentation was great. Even better was that my kids won goldfish at their school carnival last week and now I have a fishbowl to put them in, instead of the glass bowl I was using!

Anyway, there will be a short Not Me Monday section here so I can link up to Mckmama...

I did not stay up all night to do my Mishloach Manot. I did not think they were awesome when I went to bed at 6:05 am. I did not hate them when I woke up. And definitely was not totally upset all day.

Ok. back to normal. So I got most of my stuff together for my MM in advance. But since I have a crazy, 2 year old, tornado mess of a child. Love you, Alyssa. I could not do anything until everyone was asleep saturday night. Because if I had put it all together and left it sitting out it would have been all opened and thrown around and then where would I be??? Anyway, our shul had a Purim party after we read the Megilla, and I did not get all the kids to bed till way after 10 and did not even step foot into my kitchen till after 11. Plus I had to make sixty something cupcakes. And then put all the stuff together. And then wrap it in cellophane...and put a card on. So yes, I am a little obsessive and I need it to look good and all, and I thought it would. But with all my hard work and all my efforts, I just wasn't loving it this year. (Luckily I already thought up next years idea, and it's going to be much easier!)

Anyway, when my kids were little, I was able to do a theme. It was easy... they wanted to be princessy or girly and I just matched up a theme. They always wanted to match each other. Over the years things have drastically changed. They like to dress up with their friends, and definitely not with each other. So, since I like themed MM, I make them dress up for our family picture, and then get another costume that they want. This year I decided on pirates. But on their own, Jessica was dressed for a masquerade ball. Emily was supergirl. Will and Alyssa were supposed to be Mario and Luigi, but at the last minute, literally, Will freaked out about the mustache, and took the old power ranger costume out of his closet. So Alyssa was a care bear that was from Emily when she was 4.

So this year was pirate themed....

Taking the family picture is easier said than done, as all you parents know. Alyssa only lasted for 2 pictures before her melt down. The first pic was great except Will put his sword in front of my face. I wanted to use it anyway, but Jon wouldn't let. Below is the second pic. My camera's self timer gives you 10 seconds till it takes the pic, and with 2 seconds left to go, Alyssa dropped the sword (one of many props she insisted on holding).... I was like, "don't pick it up!" and then the picture was taken, the melt down began, and that was it. Walgreens did a pretty good job helping me crop, and print, and black and white it though!

And this was my MM....

Well, before I wrapped it...

This is what my dining room table looked like at around 4 am..

This was my favorite part. The treasure chest... with chocolate coins and rock candy jewels.

I made cupcakes, chocolate chip cookie bars, and a roll with an X on it in food coloring markers. I thought it would be really cute, but was not thrilled this year. Plus there were a few more people I would have loved to bring MM to, but it was either... be done or be divorced. So I chose to be done :)

Whatever. There's always next year.

Here are some pictures, my camera died so I don't have so many.... These were taken at our shul party.

Emily and her best friend (who bailed on the supergirl costume). We still love her though.

Jessica and one of her good friends

Will and Alyssa with my nephew, the zombie skateboarder

Will with my other nephew, the caveman (it was a great costume without the sweatshirt!), and the Joker

Emily and her besties!

And, Alyssa flirting with her friend from school

The Costume Store

Taking 5 kids to a big costume store is not the best idea in the world.

Especially when one of those kids is Alyssa. And she wants to try on every boy costume she can find.

Emily chose her costume in about 3 seconds. She tried on the supergirl costume, it fit, she was done. Jessica and her friend were not sure what they wanted to be... they kept looking and looking, trying things on and taking them off. 11 and 12 is a hard age. It's kinda like you are too small for the adult costumes and too big for the kid costumes. And the tween costumes are way too sexy. What's a girl to do?

I gave Alyssa, who had grabbed a batman costume, a rainbow brite costume. It was so cute. She went to the dressing room, threw all of Jessica's stuff out of it, and closed the curtain. She did NOT like the rainbow brite costume!

Will was trying on spiderman. He looked really cute in it until Alyssa started grabbing it off his body cuz she wanted it. I took it off Will and put it on Alyssa. She was soooo happy. I told Will he could have the spiderman costume, took it off Alyssa, who started screaming her head off, and went to look for more costumes for the older girls.

I found an even better spiderman, one with "muscles," and told Will to try it on. Alyssa ran over, pushed Will down, and told me to put it on her. I gave Will the first costume and put the puffy spiderman on Alyssa. She walked around the store in it. The guys who worked there were like, "Aw look how cute she is."

I told them it wasn't so cute that my daughter was a boy. This was killing me. She is supposed to want something pink. A princess dress, a ladybug, a ballerina.... anything! I know that she only wants the boy stuff because she loves Will. She wants to do everything he does. But I mean, come on... I wanted a girl so badly, and I have a girl-boy...

Well, that's not completely true. She does like jewelry.. especially necklaces. And she does like to dress up sometimes. But my other girls were all into pink when they were little, we only had girl stuff in the house, and I kinda expected the same from Alyssa.... sob.

Anyway, I told Will that he couldn't be spiderman cuz Alyssa would try to take it from him so he decided to be Mario. Of course as soon as Alyssa saw the Mario costume, she took the Luigi one. I put both of them in their costumes and decided that having them pair up as Super Mario Brothers was a fitting costume, and told them they could have it.

Jessica and her friend still hadn't chosen a costume. Well, not one that fit them at least. They decided to buy these beautiful masquerade masks, which I was happy to buy because it had already been 2 hours and I was ready to go home.

Oh I almost forgot... While they were choosing their masks, Will had to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was in the wig room. I closed the door behind him and decided to play with the wigs. I put on a hot pink bob with long bangs and walked over to the bathroom door giggling. In a voice not my own I said (while opening the bathroom door) "Little boy, is there something I can help you with?"

I have never seen the look of absolute terror like I saw at that moment on Will's face. And the scream! Hahahahhahahahaha. I am evil. But that was the funniest thing I ever saw! I am still laughing......

Anyway, I went to pay and realized that this was actually gonna cost a lot. Plus I had no clue how much Emily's costume even was. She rang me up, and I asked her if I could get a discount for buying 5 costumes. She said that they normally don't but she would ask the manager. He told her to take 20% off of the total! Yay me! I never get things on sale. Anyway, We walked out of the store... I was all excited about saving the 20% until I saw the orange ticket on my windshield.

$50 parking ticket. My meter had expired. Suddenly I was not so happy anymore. But so it goes. At least my kids had their costumes and I was finally able to leave that store.

**For those of you that are wondering why I am buying costumes in february... it is for a Jewish holiday called Purim. Each year the kids dress up, we go to synagogue, and the following morning deliver a basket of food to our friends. It used to be a few snacks on a plate when I was little, but over the years people have gotten creative and have their families dressed in themes to match their package of food they were delivering... This is one of my favorite holidays because we get to show off our creativity... and it's so much for for the kids!

I'll post pics next time...

It's All Over....

All these holidays have been very enjoyable, but I am happy to announce that they are over!!!! The kids can go back to school tomorrow and I can go back to my normal life. We will have one last hurrah at Monkey Island today.... never been there but it's supposed to be a fun indoor playground/jumpy things/climbing things for kids. Yesterday was the last day of our holidays and what I love about the holidays as opposed to Shabbat is that we can cook. So after a long day at shul (synagogue) and a luncheon there too, I let my girls bring all their friends over for some game playing, basketball playing, and cooking/baking. By the time they left they had played Whoonu, a fun cranium game... I actually played with them :), played Bratz, and set up some pretty elaborate houses and closets and a ton of who knows what that took over my family room, and played basketball. We had made some bite sized cookies, homemade pizza, and I let them make sushi by themselves! It was really delicious! I even have a picture I took last night...

There are 2 girls missing from this picture. They all did such a good job!

Anyway, I told you guys about going to Chucky Cheese on thursday, right? Well Alyssa LOVES that little carousel there. Seriously could stay on it forever!

(by the way, Jessica wore that shirt when she was 4. I hope it shrunk over the years.)

Well, I was wading through the mess of toys in my basement (why do kids dump everything?) sunday morning, throwing things out because I'm tired of cleaning up, and Alyssa found this little tiny carousel from a polly pocket toy and was carrying it everywhere... she's so cute! That's the end of the story. I know it doesn't sound like anything exceptional to blog about, but it was really cute when it happened.

Moving on.....

I just want you all to know that Will has just informed me that I should sell apples for a living. Thanks Will. And Alyssa was playing with clorox wipes while I was writing this (big OMG! She was on the kitchen table pulling them all out and wiping her face with them...almost had a heart attack!!!!!!!). And lastly, I have realized that not only does Alyssa not like her daddy at night, she is scared of him! Great. She always wakes up frantic in the middle of the night. Last night was really really bad. I asked Jon to leave our room just to see if my suspicions were right, and sure enough she stopped crying the second he walked out of the room. We obviously need Alyssa out of our room asap. This is crazy!

Sorry For All The Rain...

I mean I said I was gonna pray for rain so I wouldn't have to eat in the sukkah (if you don't know what a sukkah is, here are some pics)

but this weekend was CRAZY! Way too much rain. We actually got to eat in our sukkah on saturday for lunch (my sister and family came over) and sunday for lunch (2 friends and their families came over). I decided that eating in the sukkah during the day is really nice when the weather is good. And this year I only did little christmas lights instead of the big florescent light and it totally helped with the annoying little bug nighttime situation!

Anyway, saturday was Emily's birthday! She is 9 years old!!!!! We had all the kids in the neighborhood over for a basketball birthday party (on our awesome court)! Of course it was drizzling/pouring, but the kids were having so much fun playing slammer, that they totally didn't care about the rain and we were out there playing till it was literally pouring on us! Then we went inside and dried off and had snacks and birthday cake. I made Emily an awesome, incredible birthday cake! Seriously, I totally impressed myself! But of course forgot to take a picture of it :( and since we cannot use cameras on shabbat, the only picture I have is of this little, mangled piece of cake that was left over. :(

It was six layers of rainbow colors. I got the idea from MckMama's post...

except mine was an 8 inch round cake and I iced it with white frosting and then covered it with fondant. I didn't make your recipe, Chell, I didn't have enough time. But it was covered in white fondant with a yellow strip around the bottom, and different sized pink, orange, purple and yellow polka dots all over it! It was sooo pretty! When I cut into it and all the kids saw the layers of rainbow cake they were like, "Oh my god! it's so pretty!" And if you know me, you know that those 6 words made my day!

After they ate, I made them all go upstairs while I set up a candy hunt. Basically I poured candy all over my house, gave them each a bag on the stairs and yelled "Go!" Then the house went insane with candy crazed kids collecting as much as they could! Emily was so happy.

Believe it or not, I still am planning another party for her and her friend for their school friends. I mean one party is never enough (insert sarcasm). But, luckily this next one will be at my friend's house. And you better believe that there will be a picture of the cake from that party posted!

Anyway, sunday we had some friends over and just after dessert, Emily came over to me and told me that someone threw the basketball at her thumb and she thought it was broken. It looked ok, but I gave her an ice pack and told her to sit with me in the sukkh till she felt better. Two minutes later Jon asked her if she was feeling ok, that she didn't look well. Emily said that she felt like she might throw up. She took one step out of the sukkah and fell flat on her face on my deck. It was so scary! I picked her up and she was totally passed out. My friend poured the pitcher of water on her face and she woke up. She was totally yellow.. her face, her lips, her tongue. She didn't talk for a little. She just wanted to lay in my arms. We called 911. I asked her to say a sentence. She said, "I am cool." Jon said, "She's cold." And I said, "No. I think she said that she's cool." So I asked her to repeat it, and very slowly she said "I am cool." And then I knew she was going to be ok. I think I even laughed a little. I asked her what she ate for lunch, what time she woke up (she always announces what time she wakes up in the morning) and she was able to answer the questions, just very slowly. She was very weak. The ambulance came and took all her vitals and said she was ok, that we should make an appointment with her doctor this week. Thank god, after resting on the couch for 40 minutes she felt much better and played with her good friends at our house in the afternoon. That was a frightening day! It's really scary to see your child faint and fall flat on their face. I hope to never see that again.

Thanks to my friends who watched this all happen and helped so much!

Anyway, all is good now. We have the week off of school and will hopefully do something fun today!

Earmuffs

My kids are no longer allowed to listen to the radio on the way to school in the morning. I would like to thank B96 for telling my kids that Kristen Cavallari did not sleep with John Mayer because she didn't want to be another notch on his belt. And that John Mayer said that he did not penis high five her. WTF???? I mean, I am trying to listen to music. With my kids. On our way to school. Again, WTF???

Will was like, "penis? Did they just say penis?"

Jessica and Emily were quietly laughing. I was like, "I mean, what does that even mean? That is gross. From now on we are only listening to ipods in the car." Sheesh. Can't a mom take her kids to school without hearing about celebrity sex lives? Thank God they weren't in the car during 103.5's "Ask the Bitch" hour. Radio conversation is NOT for kids!

So now that Will is thinking about how to give a penis high five, I will just go on with my day pretending it never happened....

Sometimes I wish I had a script so I would know what to say to my kids....

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Now, onto something wholesome and pure....

We have started decorating our sukkah (outdoor hut that we eat in during the holiday of sukkot) today. I love building the sukkah, decorating the sukkah, I even love planning for company in our sukkah. But when it comes to eating in it.... I pray for rain. There is something about eating outside, with little tiny bugs flying around the lights, possible pieces of schach (the bamboo roof) falling into my hair and onto my plate. Yuck! Seriously, I am starting to get sick just thinking about it. But we are only at the decorating and preparing part, so I am happy as can be. We hung our plastic grapes today. We have little birdhouses that we have used in the past, but I'm kind of sick of them, so I'll only use them if the kids ask me too. We will hang the foam paper chain my kids made 3 years ago, each year adding on a few more foam links. It's kind of like decorating a christmas tree. In fact I even use those little Christmas lights! Love them! I will definitely take some pics when we are done. These pictures are of our sukkah so far.

Building the sukkah...

Will wants to sleep in the sukkah! (Is he really my kid?) So if the weather is nice, I will let the men (Jon and Will) rough it on air mattresses in the sukkah. I, of course, will be nice and warm, snug in my king sized bed.

Something Creative...

Will was news reporter for a week at school. He had to bring in news articles to share with the class every day. I had a really hard time with it because there are very few age appropriate news articles out there. Anyway, I found a kids news website that had all sorts of interesting things on it. One thing in particular (not really news) was really cute! The website is funkylunch.com.... A dad puts up pictures of all his artistic and healthy lunches. He makes them cute so his kids will be healthy and enjoy eating it. Check it out. Here's a picture of one of them for all of you who aren't going to click on the link...

How cute is that? What kid wouldn't love their parent to serve them their lunch like this??

Speaking of being creative.... I think I am going to try to use fondant this week. Emily's birthday is on saturday and I want to try to make her an awesome cake. I want to be like Buddy on Cake Boss. I love that show! Seriously, he is great at making cakes.... and he makes it look so easy. I know it's not easy and I wish I had one of those fondant roller outers. You Cake Boss watchers know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I want to start simple and make a polka dot one or maybe something like this...

Anyway, the most dreaded day of the year has come and gone. Yom Kippur. It was actually an easy fast this year, but it was sooooo cold out and I was freezing in shul (synogogue). Jessica fasted the whole day too! I was so impressed with her! She is a great faster. Hope you guys had an easy (and meaningful, as my bro says) fast too.

Now on to the next holiday, Succot, and then we are done for a while. I have a lot of cooking and baking to do this week. Hope something exciting will happen this week so I won't have to bore you with all my cooking and baking details and pictures.

:)

My Weekend

So Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, has come and gone. All the preparing, shopping, cooking, baking, shoe buying, clothes buying.... done. Well, the clothes buying and shoe buying is never done. It's like handbags, you never really need another one, but it's always fun to buy it anyway.

On friday I took my Mom to get our hair done. She looked like she was going to cry while it was happening. She is used to her hair being very curly, and I had the person straighten her hair with big curls at the bottoms. She looked amazing! I think she got used to it after a few hours and even started liking it! Everyone told her how amazing she looked, and I think it was the most perfect thing I could do for her to make her feel special after a week's worth of cooking for the holiday! It lasted the whole weekend. And as a woman, there is nothing better than knowing that your hair looks great!

We had a really nice time at my parents' house with my youngest sister, my younger sister and her family, and my parents and cousins. It definitely was a little crowded and a little noisy, but it was very nice and I totally enjoyed every minute of it. I hope everyone else enjoyed their holiday (or weekend) too.

Oh, on sunday, we were really bored because it was raining, and for those of you that don't know, there is very little to do on a jewish holiday when you are stuck inside all day. Anyway, my sister (21) decided to let Jessica give her a makeover. She actually did pretty well. Well, except for the lip liner. Then my sister did Jessica and Emily's face in full makeup. Emily looked a bit like Jonbenet Ramsey. Jessica looked like she was 16. Pretty scary! They loved it though. They walked around in heels and stared at themselves in the mirror. The not so fun part was scrubbing it all off their faces before bed. I couldn't get all of it off, and Jessica went to school this morning looking like she had black eyeliner on ( I think she was secretly happy it didn't come off).

This morning I brought Will's old clothes to my sister in law's house for her baby (6 months). Took some clothes for Alyssa from her daughter (3), brought my sister some clothes for her 1 month old baby boy from the sister in law, and got more stuff for Alyssa from her daughter (almost 4). It's a great system we have.

Not so much going on here... just enjoying my nice quiet house for a little before all the kiddies come home.....