Purim

Last night started the Jewish holiday of Purim, so we thought it would be fun to celebrate (a little early), too! Purim is a remembrance of how the Jews were saved from annihilation by their enemies that was plotted out by the wicked Haman. The bravery of Queen Esther, the wisdom of Mordecai and the undercurrent of God's faithfulness to his chosen people even during the time of their captivity due to their hardened hearts...

The kids all got dressed up, we put on some Oud (a middle eastern instrument- thanks for the CD, Tim and Jeni!), set up the living room middle-eastern-style with pillows to recline on, and put out some nuts, fruit, and popcorn. A note to remember for next time: remember sippy cups for the little ones...We then read the whole book of Esther (it took about 40 minutes, with all the interruptions), booing when we heard the name Haman and cheering for Mordecai! 

 We're ready!

 

 We read!

 We made it! Barely.

Happy Purim!!!

Feel the love

 Bailey is loooooooving the attention! Whoever turned her in to the pound said she's 4 months old, but the vet says she's 7 months (she was only at the pound for a couple weeks). We wouldn't have gotten her if we had known she was 7 months, but I had been praying for God to match us with just the right dog, and she certainly seems to be that! She's pretty mellow: doesn't bark, doesn't lick much but loves to be with people, and comes when she's called (so far). Potty training we'll need to work on...I have a clicker and will try to do click training and see how that goes. So here she is!

  P.S. Bailey is named after George Bailey from It's a Wonderful Life who got another chance at life.

Art

My mom's been doing art with my kids when she's around...here are their landscape paintings from last week...

 Anne's

 Elijah's

Peter's

Back-ish

I think the last week of no computer was good. Except that I started reading Sherlock Holmes, and I'm not sure that it was a terribly efficient use of my time. But I sure got a lot more done and therefore a better week emotionally than it could've been. Here are just a couple fun anecdotes from the week...
A couple weeks ago I was laughing at my sister because they were contemplating getting a new dishwasher because it was doing a lousy job cleaning (they were able to remedy the problem). Well, lo and behold I started getting more and more frustrated with having to rinse my dishes after every wash in the dishwasher, to the extent that I finally gave up and just started washing by hand (my remedies didn't work). So Christian started taking it apart to try to clean out the insides. Then I called him for dinner and he shut the dishwasher. Halfway through dinner Peter got up to get something and remarked that it smelled like smoke. I replied that it was impossible- all the burners and oven were off- I was sure of it. So Christian got up and discovered the dishwasher smoking. One of the twins had turned on the heat dry function and it was melting all those parts that Christian had left loose in there. Ha! So I kept washing dishes by hand. Somewhat therapeutic, even though for 90% of my life I've hated doing dishes. For about 2 minutes I thought, "who needs a dishwasher anyway? It would be good for me to just keep up with the dishes after every meal! For the rest.of.my.life. And I could use the extra cabinet space!" Then reality hit that life is only going to get crazier as the kids get older and that I would be reeeally ticked later if I had turned that space into a cabinet. I think Christian wouldn't have done it anyway, he's a smart guy. So he got a really good model on clearance and I'm enjoying it immensely! :)
On a different note, the other evening Tirzah was lying on her tummy kicking her legs around when Berea got really mad about something and started yelling at her. Tirzah slapped her hands over her cheeks, with her mouth forming an O and said under perfect control, "Berea, stop yelling at me!" Fun times. I'll try to pull out the camera this week. But for now, laundry!

Fasting

While I'm sure I could use a good food fast, I'm actually going to be doing a computer fast for awhile. Until I can get my household back to running smoothly, I'll be counting on Christian to check e-mail and I won't be blogging. Which means, if you need to get in touch, you'd better use the phone! :) Hopefully it won't be terribly long, but I'm tired of my propensity to waste time and need to get back in the habit of actually getting things done. So, until next time- God bless!