Shabbat on the Plaza 2013

It was a bittersweet night for us, since this is the second-to-last Shabbat on the Plaza that we'll be attending before we leave. It's an outdoor service that our synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, conducts six times every summer. You bring a picnic blanket and a picnic dinner and after the service, everyone visits with each other under the warm sun(set). We caught up with at least one synagogue member who thought we had already left, but she seemed glad to see that we were still around.

Rachel caught up with a slightly older girl, Naomi, who always looks for Rachel when she and her parents come to synagogue and refers to her as "my friend, Rachel." After being a little standoffish with each other, she and Rachel connected pretty quickly and ran off and played while I wandered around the plaza, wondering if we'll find as warm and welcoming a synagogue community in northern Virginia or DC or Maryland or wherever we find a new place. I love our chavurah and I love our rabbi. I told him tonight that it pained me greatly that he wouldn't be overseeing her bat mitzvah, and added that she would have been his best student. He nodded and said, "She'll always be my Shabbat Shalom girl!" which he has called her since she was a toddler, since she always insisted on running up to him after services and giving him a big hug.

Rachel and Naomi played a bit in the park across the street, then we came home, read another chapter from Trumpet of the Swan (we're at the part where Louis is playing his trumpet in front of the Swan Boats) and then I put Rachel to bed. I'm going to stop writing now because my hands are killing me -- I'm seeing a doctor about that next week -- and I'm quite sleepy. Got one moving quote today; another one tomorrow morning and a third one on Monday morning before we head into preschool/work. Then Drew and I will make a decision and hire the folks and that's one less thing I'll have to worry about. I feel like I need to make a gigantic, wall-sized list of everything that needs to get done in the four(!) weeks we have left before we decamp to the East Coast. I just hope I can fit it all in without dropping out of sheer exhaustion.