Rosh Hashanah, painting, and Costco

They don't have anything in common. Three things I wanted to blog about. That's it.

Rosh Hashanah

The only thing we can get from our Delta sky miles is useless magazines (I didn't mean it, People magazine. YOU certainly aren't useless.) So, we have maybe 5 free subscriptions of various mags that show up. One of those is Martha Stewart Living. I skim through it to see how uncreative I am overall, enjoy pics of others' creativity, and then put it aside for someone else who might enjoy perusing through it. The last page of of the latest edition had a picture and recipe for Apple Honey Challah that caught my attention. "Ooooh. That's pretty bread," I thought. I was amazed that I actually had all the ingredients for a Martha recipe (I don't think she shops at Walmart OR Albertson's. Table salt just won't do. It's coarse sea salt for Martha.) Anyhoo, I set out to make the pretty bread one evening. I had Jake look "challah" up on Wikipedia, the site I always refused to let my students use for research but that I use on a regular basis, to find out why it is made in connection with the Rosh Hashanah celebration. We learned, we ate, we acknowledged the fact that Rosh Hashanah isn't for another month. But it IS pretty bread, isn't it?

Painting

On our trip to the craft store Michael's, we bumped into the clearance section on our way to what we were looking for. There was a wooden alphabet puzzle for $1.50. I have plenty of craft paint, so I figured it would be a fun project for Tessa to paint and a toy we could use to work on letter recognition. She LOVED being the artist and spent a good amount of time making her wooden letters look just so. While Sister did this:

Brother did this:

And Mom had a sweet, uninterrupted time making dinner.

Here is the lovely finished product after I drew the letter markings back on the paint caked pieces the next day. She's especially proud of the "rainbow letter" V.

Costco

A. If you see one of these in the Costco parking lot, it HAS to be for one of the employees, right?

Because there is no way you are going to fit anything from Costco in this vehicle. I had boxes piled on top of my children on our way home today from a small shopping trip. And this was at least in a four door auto.

B. Today when we parked our car, a Black Eyed Peas song came on the radio. I was bopping along to it and looking back at Tessa to try to get her to do the same. She just smiled as her mom had a dance party that she didn't feel like joining. I got out of the car where there were 4 senior citizen age men standing a couple cars away. One hollered at me to get my attention and let me know that they all had been watching me and that I had given them a good laugh. I replied, smiling but embarassed, "I'm glad I could do that for you today." They silently walked past me, and only crickets chirped as they made their way into Costco. I followed slowly to avoid and give the awkwardness some space. He DID say "laugh", didn't he?

And to that I say: "I'm so three thousand and eight. You so two thousand and late! Boom, boom, boom!"

One last thing:

It was Cole's one month check up this morning. (12 lbs, 10 oz. if you are still following the stats on the baby linebacker). Tessa was able to get the nose spray flu vaccine while we were there, and did very well. She kept talking about the lady "painting" her nose, though. I like to hear how she describes things with her two year old vocabulary. She's into the phrase, "it's kind of like.." lately. Comparisons. She had some chocolate milk. "Mama? It's kinda like candy."