A Day (or Weekend) in the Life

Today in the link up with with Kim and Tanya at GirlXOXO (link here) and T of Traveling With T (link here) for #AMonthofFaves we're talking about a day (or weekend) in our lives. I didn't take a ton of pictures this weekend because a lot of the time, we were with other people and I felt a bit awkward about it. However, hopefully these pictures will give you a good sense of our interfaith weekend.

On Friday after school, the kids and I baked cookies. We were having guests over the next day and I wanted cookies for dessert. We make Jell-O cookies (recipe here) and even though the recipe says it was only posted in May 2019, the blogger must have changed their post. We've been making these for quite a few years now. We make red (raspberry) and green (lime) for Christmas and yellow (lemon) and blue (blue raspberry) for Channukah.

We had a fast supper where we briefly lit both the Shabbat candles and the Advent wreath because we were headed off to...

 

...our neighbourhood Christmas tree pick up party. It's held at a local park. While we weren't going to stay very long, the kids enjoyed playing and roasting marshmallows and Dave and I enjoyed visiting so we were there for over an hour.

Then I came home, crawled into bed, read for a bit, and was asleep before 10. Yikes.

Saturday mornings are always a bit of a rush getting both kids out the door. Rachel has over two hours of dance on Saturday morning (and is at the level where she has to have a bun) and Sam has Religious School at the synagogue. This day, Dave was teaching Religious School so he needed to get out the door for the morning too.

After everyone was gone, I folded laundry and addressed some of our holiday cards while listening to the first Christmas music of the season.

And I rearranged the dining room to clear a spot for our Christmas tree.

Then I headed out, walking through the cemetery to catch the LRT to pick Rachel up from dance. A friend met us there and drove us to church so that she and Rachel could practice worship leading for the next day.

This is a picture from their practice on Saturday. It's unusual for an eight year old to worship lead at our church but Rachel expressed interest and a good friend of ours worked with her to plan the service and figure it all out. I'm so thankful for adult mentors who help nurture my kids' interests.

Our friend drove Rachel and I home and I made tuna melts. Dave and Sam got home from the synagogue just as the tuna melts were ready.

We were all really tired so I declared it was family nap time. Rachel crawled into bed with me and supposedly slept for about half an hour. I was exhausted and slept for two hours. Ooops. Then I dealt with some ice on our driveway, tidied up, and prepared for our friends to come for dinner.

We extended our table with our big board and Rachel was in charge of setting the table. I made a double batch of Mexican lasagna (which is basically tortillas, cheddar cheese, and a bean filling) and we had a really good evening with our friends.

After they left, Rachel and I did some dishes and got most of them done in about fifteen minutes. Sam was already in bed reading and Dave was doing other tidying. And no, we don't have a dishwasher.

Once the kids were in bed, I read a book with my comfort (magic? heat?) bag wrapped around my feet. This is often how I go to bed in the winter.

Sunday morning I woke up and wrote a quick children's story as Sam and I were on for presenting it in church that morning. Normally, I would have thought about it earlier, but there was a lot going on and I just didn't get around to it. I focused on the Isaiah 11 verse about the "wolf lying down with the lamb" but I thought it was the "lion lying down with the lamb" so maybe I misled the kids...? Ooops.

Sam and I practiced and Rachel ate breakfast. Then we all got ready to head out the door for the day.

I LOVE our church. I love the people. I love the feeling I get when I walk in the door. I love that there are adults who love my kids.

Rachel did an excellent job of worship leading and lots of people gave her encouragement afterwards. She was so happy to be done!

After church we drove through the countryside to Dave's parents'. We had lunch with them and then Dave's dad gave Rachel, Sam, and I a Hebrew lesson. We are all trying to learn Hebrew this year. It's HARD. We know thirteen letters and eleven vowel sounds so the words we're able to make (and read) are getting long and tricky. Dave's mom had some old books and schoolwork of Dave's to pass on so we also looked through that.

On the way home, we stopped at Costco and picked up a picture order which had been sitting there for almost two weeks. Yikes. There's just been a lot going on lately.

We got home and got our Christmas tree inside. We unwrapped it and let the branches settle. Hopefully we'll get it decorated tonight. Hopefully!

Dave, Sam, and Rachel played a game which Dave had invented when he was in Grade 5 as a school project. It is about prospecting for gold in the Yukon so it reminded the kids of our trip this past summer! This was one of the things we brought home from Dave's parents' house.

We had fish tacos for supper and lit the second candle on our Advent wreath.

After supper, we found out some news which we had been waiting for about our summer. It is news that mostly effects Sam and we spent the rest of the evening processing the news we received. I will talk about it more on the blog at some point, but I'm just not ready yet. However, I wanted to be honest and say that I stopped taking pictures at this point because it's hard to take pictures of lots of conversations :)

I will also be honest and say that this weekend, although filled with lots of fun, was hard. I am tired and that is not a great way to be heading into this week. I would have liked to have more time at home, and more energy, to get things done. But some weekends are like that and deserve to be documented as truthfully as the really fun and exciting weekends, right?

I am excited about one particular thing this week and I think I will try and blog about it more on Thursday, when I have a bit more information to share with you all. I will give you a hint though: I have been unemployed (not by choice) since the end of August, and today and tomorrow I am doing training and orientation for MY NEW JOB!!! Whoo hooo!!! I really can't wait to share more with you once I have a better sense of a few things :)