March began with the observance of Purim. Purim tells the story of Queen Esther saving her fellow Jewish people from a genocidal plot by the King’s evil advisor. Hooray! In modern days, Jewish people in the US celebrate by making Hamantaschen, something we’ve been doing for several years now, and my attending costume parties and carnivals together at the synagogue. The latter is something we have not really done. Now that we’re finally settled into a synagogue that we’re regularly taking the boys to for religious school, it was front and center on our calendar earlier this month.
But first, the boys helped me make the Hamantaschen at home!
This year we used cherry pie filling, home made plum jam (from our tree!), and Nutella for a few, upon Aaron’s request.
The boys had a lot of fun at the carnival at the synagogue. They dressed up in their Halloween costumes from October to join all the other kids (and some adults) in the costume parade and songs before the carnival. Then there were jugglers, a bouncy house, lots of games, and they both even agreed to eat hot dogs for lunch there. And they really loved adding up all their prize tickets at the end to pick out some prizes.
The following weekend I was at SCALE, but MJ brought Aaron to his first t-ball game, and I had the pleasure of joining them the following weekend. Watching a bunch of 4-5 year olds scattered around a baseball diamond trying to do something resembling a baseball game is absolutely adorable. They’re not great at hitting, or catching, or throwing, or knowing much about game mechanics at all, but they’re all having a lot of fun outdoors with some new friends. At this second game we also had our first au pair and her husband join us to watch him play, and go out for lunch afterwards.
I am practicing catch with Aaron in the evenings when we have time and the weather cooperates (it’s been HOT!), I even picked up my own baseball glove. He’s also still got practice with his team on Monday evenings too. Lots of baseball!
Getting into the routine of baseball and religious school over the weekend will take some getting used to. I’m usually scouring email and websites for the latest activities at our local parks and museums to keep us busy. On the one hand, it’s nice to not have to do that, but on the other, will I miss our constant adventures? We’ll see!
The rest of our weekends have been taken up by obligatory errands and chores, including our continuing project to clear out and reorganize the garage while the boys ride their bikes outside.
Aaron and I have also been doing a lot of Lego together, most recently we’re working our way through a set with four Star Wars astromech droids wearing costumes. The boys have also started playing video games together a bit more, with Adam showing Aaron how to play the games, which is super cute. They’ve even brought me in to play sometimes, especially when they’re playing on Realms and the two of them join on the PS5 and I can hop on with my Switch (how many copies of Minecraft across devices are we going to end up owning?).
F1 season began too, and though we’ve never watched it before, Adam asked if we could this year. Sure! That means putting on some practices here and there, and then watching the 30 minute race recaps each week. It’s been a lot of fun. They have so many questions about cars that I don’t know how to answer, so we’re learning a lot too.
So as much as I love adventures, bonding with them over things we can do at home from the couch is really nice too, and gets me at least a little of the rest I need over the weekend.
This week I’m packing for us to head to Philadelphia for a couple weeks. We’re aiming to attend a cousin’s birthday party, go to an open source conference, and Passover host a Seder at our house with as many family members as we can convince to come by. Packing has me a little overwhelmed, as always, but I’m sure we’ll have a nice time once I can settle in.