It's Almost Shabbat, Do You Know Where YOUR Shnitzel Is?

Erev Shabbat: The oldest and youngest are napping, and the short-ish ones are watching a movie. The chicken is cooking, and the other little erev Shabbat things that are left to do can't be done yet - according to law, they must be done immediately before Shabbat, so we can all rush around and yell and throw things. (I exaggerate. A little.) So, time to blog.

1. After a week of marathon birthday parties (i.e. carpooling), I ended the week on a much more fun note - I went out on a date with a cute guy. What's his name again? He's the one who occasionally shows up here to eat and sleep and drink wine. Not necessarily in that order. Ziv, I think he calls himself.

We celebrated by going out to a fancy restaurant in Jerusalem. (Gabriel's.) The celebration? All birthdays and anniversaries since 2009, the last time we went out. And because it's a bloggy, bloggy world, our babysitter was none other than Tali, daughter of Baila. For her commission, Baila received the Golden Globes edition of People magazine. Enjoy it Baila, it was a good one.

2. Ariella and I are learning about the mishkan for her project at school. Every kid has to pick a topic and present to the class about it. Ariella's date is in a month, so we figured it was time to get cracking. Also, she was driving me crazy, asking, "When can we start my חוקר צעיר?"

As we were studying a diagram of the mishkan, she wanted to know if the "חצר" was where the kids could play. I explained that it's not that kind of chatzer and it was considered kadosh as well. She wanted to know exactly where the mommies and daddies davened and where the kids played.
("And ye shall build for yourselves a slide, 4 amot high and 3 amot long, covered inside and out in yellow plastic.")

3. Yaakov came home from a birthday party last night and informed me there had not been dinner. When asked if he would like something to eat, he gave us a strange look. "No," he said, his face smeared in chocolate, "I had lots of, you know, mamtakim and junk food." Dinner? We don't need no stinkin' dinner!

4. For all those concerned about Nadav's hair, it is growing back. Unfortunately, it is growing up instead of out. Oh well.

Speaking of which, one of the sleeping beauties is requesting that I come rescue him from his room. I'll let you guess which one that is.