Purim!

Yesterday, Sunday, we took Rachel to a Purim carnival at the Reform synagogue near our house. That's when we realized what a huge deal Rodef Shalom is -- there were dozens and dozens and dozens of kids and dozens and dozens and dozens of games (plus hamentaschen that, frankly, could have a used a little more oomph in the taste department). Rachel won a couple of little trinkets for the kid games but got very upset when she didn't win a big one -- it was a version of musical chairs where you danced around in a circle and when the music stopped, you stopped on a number on the floor and if the number was chosen out of a bag, you got to choose a cake, a series of cupcakes or a box of doughnuts to take home. Rachel didn't win and she started crying and crying -- sometime we don't always realize she's still little.

Afterward we headed home and Rachel and I worked on cleaning out her room. I had woken up very early that morning, worried sick about her inability to swim and the fact that she isn't making any progress in swim lessons, and I had come downstairs to research possibilities for classes (Drew forgot to sign her up for gymnastics and swimming again, so now it's my problem. Sigh). As long as I was in the office I went ahead and wrote up a story I was assigned to write for an alumni magazine. The result: After the carnival I was exhausted, and Drew insisted that I take a nap. So I did, and after three hours of bizarro dreams, I awoke to Drew and Rachel coming home from grocery shopping. I made lamb and rice pilaf while Drew raced out to get more food (it's a problem with us, we need to go to three different grocery stores just to get the fairly simple stuff we need). Drew put Rachel to bed, I relaxed on the couch with the newspaper, and we settled in for a long night of SNOW.