My Sukkos Diary 2009

1st Day Chol Hamoed, I had a great time at Hershey Park. I was expecting to see lots of people I knew there, but ended up seeing 3 people I knew. I went on 5 rides there, the lines weren’t so bad. It’s been so long since I went to an amusement Park so I enjoyed all the rides. Seeing kids waiting on line was comforting, knowing if they can handle the roller coasters then so can I!

(I tried to insert JavaScript in the post before, but apparently blogger doesn’t let, so I had to remove it.)

Comet

Skyview

Wild Mouse

Ferris Wheel

Lightning Racer

2nd Day Chol Hamoed, I went with my family to Skver to visit relatives. It was nice when they spoke English for us, so we can understand. We went to one of my father’s cousins house, she has 15 children, all married, and her grand children are married, and some are getting married. One of her grand children was there, she was 18 and getting married to her uncle, similar to the wedding I mentioned before.

There were a bunch of Chassidish men and boys there too, 2nd and 3rd cousins. I was watching them talk in Yiddish and I finally figured out the glasses style. They have 3 different styles. One is a beigish rim around thick classes for children, another is black on the top rim and clear on the bottom rim on big sized glasses for boys and adults; most common, the third is a bigger thicker beige rim for adults, which wasn’t too common.

We sat and talked in their sukkah for 2 hours, they offered us fruits, cakes and drinks. Here are some pictures of the decorations in their sukkah. In Skver, a lot of houses have sukkah’s in their house, seems really convenient and comfortable. Though I wonder if it takes away from the traditional feeling of going outside for sukkos.

If you look on the bottom right side you will see part of a recliner.	If you look on the top right side you will see part of an air conditioner.

We then went to the Palasades Mall. One my fathers cousins in Skver owns a few rides there, and he said we can go on for free. We checked out the Ferris Wheel, but it wasn’t running at the time. So we went to play Laser tag. It was my first time playing Laser tag, it was lots of fun, they had tons of caves and places to hide in. We played a team game, and my team one of course: girl power!

   

We then went to watch a 3D imax “Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs”, it was excellent!

 

What I have to say about it:

1. I noticed a lot of father and son relationships, they weren’t much into the mothers. One father kept telling his son he loves him, another loved his son but didn’t no how to express it, and yet another spoiled his son, the brat, but didn’t know how to love him. It was a family oriented movie, which I liked. It had that loyalty thing, of choosing family over someone else.
   
   
2. I liked how it had techy geeky stuff, I noticed that he always said what he was doing, I figured this is so the kids can understand what’s happening.
   
   
3. I liked how they made the “nerd” be the cool one. That she started out as a pretty girl who would say silly things so that she didn’t sound smart and won’t be made fun of as a nerd, but then when she was excited about something she knew, she would just say it, and then play dumb after. So then the scientist realized she was smart and told her to be herself, and put a pony in her hair, and put glasses on her, and said she was beautiful then.
   
   
4. They were really creative with their play on words, and use of food. I loved the Jello part, where they took into account the substance of the food and then created a function out of it, like the ability to jump on it like a trampoline.
   
   
5. I noticed a lot of food avalanches, with people running away, but yet no one got hurt. That’s what makes it a PG movie. But yet, it makes it unrealistic. There’s only one case of a kid getting sick from eating too much candy, he then gets better with cellery in a second. So that makes it not scary for kids.

3rd day  Chol Hamoed was a really windy day, and our sukkah started to collapse; the door busted, so it was time to take it down before more damage occured.

 

One of the boards even flipped over from the wind while it was on the floor. Good thing we don’t have to eat in the sukkah second days, because now it’s all put away. Good thing I took pictures of the Sukkah before Sukkos.

I then got to do some fun mini high way driving, down curvy roads at 30 mph, and that was my fun for the day. I drove my family to an arcade/ride place. Then later that night we went to see the Simchas Bais Hashoaiva a shul in the neighborhood put together. There was a “fire” man who juggled with fire, and made balloon shapes for the kids. There was singing and dancing and the kids really enjoyed it.

4th day Chol Hamoed, I Drove on my own, for the first time! I took my little sister to a ceramics place, and spent 4 hours there painting. It was buy one get one free, so we both got to paint 2 things. I painted a shoe and a rollerblade.

After the painting, I drove my family to the water to say Tashlich.

Hope you all had a great Chol First Days Sukkos and Chol Hamoed.

Can’t wait for Simchas Torah; Candy!

Chanukah at the Kotel

In the post before I mentioned that my brother’s bar mitzvah will be in Israel at the Kotel at Chanukah time.

Now here are some art drawings I made in 9th Grade that fit in with the theme. The last one of the chofetz Chaim doesn’t really have to do with Israel or Chanukah, but it’s one of my favorites so I just have to post it!

        

P.S. How do you like my handwriting?

 The Jewish Side

Update: This is what the post should have looked like, I removed the pictures just to show the font.

Where I Would Go

I’ve been tagged by LVNSM27 to answer this question:

If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?

My Answer: Home!

They say Home is where the heart is.

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”

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The way I would draw a house when I was younger:

For some reason that is the way I picture a house looking. Every time I draw a house for a kid, I draw it that way. I wonder if someone taught me to draw it like that, or I started it on my own. Anybody else draw a house like that?

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House I drew in High School:

Used Birchas Habayis words as lines and pastels to color it in. The colors are a bit faded as it’s old, but if you look closely you’ll notice the bricks are different colors. Also if you notice the windows are halfway done, so that they look open. Since our art teacher told us we shouldn’t make a whole window because it looks like a cross.

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Now this House I painted on Monday at a ceramics place:

I painted red steps since my house has always had red steps. This took a really long time to paint, I wanted all the details to be done correctly. It was a funny thing that I chose to paint a house. As my brother was in the car driving us to the ceramics place I was thinking to myself about houses. Then when we got there and I was looking for something to paint, I spotted the house and it felt like a sign.

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Speaking of houses, there’s a Halacha that you can’t cut down a fruit tree. There are these fruit trees with orange colored fruits that fall down in the fall. When they fall they land on the floor and stink up the whole place. So if anyone’s looking to buy a house, be on the look out for these trees.

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To end on a positive note The Dugger House looks great!

Next up: Interactive post - “Your Say On Big Families”

Flowers 101

This 101st post is dedicated to Leora, who has shown me the beauty in nature and G-d’s creations!

The post is inspired by Ilana-Davita, by looking at her flower picture. Click on the picture to see her post.

Now when I saw that picture, it reminded me of my garden.

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Before there were these pretty roses, there were some mysterious flowers appearing in my garden. Leora helped Identify them.

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Another thing I love about Leora’s blog, is her art collection of posts. So this picture is in honor of Leora’s art and flowers. I painted these roses a long time ago.

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Last up are the shvous flowers I picked out.

Chanukah!

Happy Last Day of Chanukah to everyone! Hope you all had joyous Chanukah’s. For the first time I actually made latkes and it was lots of fun and they all got eaten up. I still haven’t figured out why Chanukah doughnuts have to have Jelly in them in order to be counted as sufganeyot.

Here’s a picture of a Menorah I made in 9th grade art. The background isn’t too great, but for the Menorah I copied my fathers. The second one I also made in 9th grade art, (it’s using x’s on graph paper).

Here’s a picture of a cute menorah for all the woman shoe shoppers out there.

We were privileged to have 3 chanukah parties on Sunday in our house. The first party was for my Lakewood cousins. They brought a long a paper of picture hints for 22 different Chassidish groups. I hadn’t known there were so many. Have fun trying to figure out the answers, lots of them have Yiddish in them so it can get confusing. I’ll put the answers in invisible ink so that you have to select the space near the number in order to see it.

1. Cherynoble	2. Beltz	3. Stichin	4. Skulya
5. Gebrow	6. Skullen	7.Klausenberg	8. Kasho
9. Karleen	10. Faultshen	11. Spinka	12. Lubavich
13. Boston	14. Rotferd	14 b. Siget	15. Satmar
16. Boyan	17.MunKatch	18. Ger	19. Square
20. Shoprun	21. Nirbarter	22. Bobov

At the second party we had my cousins from Queens and their kids. One cousin has Knayna Hora 5 kids under the age of 4! Her youngest are a set of twins. She is truly a super hero mother. Her kids are adorable. I enjoyed playing with them, and they are lucky to have a super Dad too! The other family of cousins have 3 kids also little kids, they were cute too! It’s been so long since we had babies running around in our house that it was nice and noisy when they came. Then my mother’s twin brother’s family came, and they actually just had a baby too. So there were 4 babies, and 5 other little kids there, plus the bigger kids. We don’t get to see them too often and it’s been ages since they came to our house so it was a really nice treat.

Party number three was for the Boro park relatives. Those were all adults, except my aunt brought one of her grandchildren so that was nice. My aunt mentioned that she was very good at SET, so I brought my game down and played with her and I was so surprised how this 6 year old was so good at it, right away she was able to get them. Here everyone told a little d’var Torah for my little sister’s bas mitzvah. So my little brother gave a little speech on Parshas Mikeitz since it’s going to be his Bar Mitzvah Parsha next year. So then I decided to give a little d’var Torah too, so I said over my Parshas Mikeitz post.

Here’s a Chanukah Video I made. I am very honored that G6 had posted my video on her blog without even knowing that I made it!