In an attempt to get more organized and keep up with the kids' activites, here goes another attempt at inserting photos in the blog.

We had a cardinal nest in the bushes right below our front porch.  The kids were able to watch all of the excitement from the mommy laying each egg (well, seeing it afterwards) to the eggs hatchin and then the baby birds leaving the nest.

My mom bought a new kayak for her week long trip down the Flint River.  Pretty impressive for someone who's almost 63.  Lathan was the first to try it out on Jackson Lake near our house.

We went to the beach for Shavuot (Feast of Weeks) but the only day we actually went "on" the beach was the day we left to come home.  This was the day after the feast, June 10th at Carolina Beach, NC.

And our big event of June:  Lydia lost her first tooth on June 17th.  I bought it from her for $1 and keep it in my special box.  Sorry, no fairies in our house.  Her daddy works too hard for his money to give credit for presents to fairies or bunnies or fat men in red suits.

We started My Father's World first grade about two days ago.  So far, so good.  I think she'll really enjoy it once we get used to the structure.  Still using Heart of Wisdom methods for Bible study and any other fun units we want to check out in the meantime.  We're slowly incorporating the lessons from Math-U-See and combining it with some of the "fun" math activities that MFW recommends.  The kids are letting me know I've been on the computer long enough.

I don't know why it's taken so long for me to return to the world of blogging.  For the very few who read my blog, a big shalom and howdy since it's been way too long since I've sat down to type a little.

Life is good and busy.  We hope to have Lydia finished with her kindergarten lessons by June or July.  We now try to say "lessons" each day instead of "school time" to help me get over the schoolitis that plagues me every so often.  I start to compare what I'm doing to everyone else in the homeschool universe and as I'm sure you know, that is a recipe for doubt, fear, and disaster.  Thankfully, I'm not in that mode right now and will prayerfully stay on the course of trusting Elohim (God) for how I'm to teach our children.

We plan to use My Father's World 1st grade and mix it with Heart of Wisdom's Adam to Abraham unit studies.  I also hope to begin MathUSee and Kinderbach for a music curriculum.  Yes, I used the C word and can't believe I'm going down this road.  But I have to admit that I need more structure and outline than I care to admit.  It's been a growing process.  At the same time, it's been so exciting to see Lydia really get a good grasp of reading.  And more rewarding is to hear her beginning to pray out loud.  She has been extrememly shy of this area but now is turning a corner.  We still play math games and have started to play map games.  This has been lots of fun and something Jeff joins us for since the kids have a giant laminated world map and US map above their bed.

Lathan is as cute and unpredictable as ever.  I bought him a "schoolbook" and he likes to color in it and trace the letters.  He doesn't really do any of the activities in it but he likes to have it sometimes while I'm working with Lydia.  He's still into puzzles and bubbles are his never-ending obsession, along with taking apart or cutting up anything he can get away with.  I have to greatly limit his computer time because it could be a real problem for him.  I guess he learns with it but I don't like them to sit looking at a screen for any long length of time.  He and Lydia currently love exploring the woods and creek behind our house.  I'm ok with it until the weather warms up and the snakes awake.

Jonah is as adorable as ever and truly lights up each day for everyone in the house.  He started standing the last day of December and has finally mastered walking in the last two months.  It seems he will probably be talking sooner than his siblings did.  Time will tell.

The only other news on our homefront is that we might be moving to Arkansas.  It would be a promotional job transfer for Jeff and very behooving to us financially.  He says we'd move back to GA or possibly to the panhandle of FL/AL after two years if we don't like it there.  Time will tell I guess.  We won't know anything for sure for a couple of weeks.

The kids are busy with their bubbles and I need to clean up from lunch.  I hope to blog again sooner than later!

The kids and I have been in Albany (my hometown) for about 5 days now and Jeff was here for the weekend but went home yesterday.  My dad was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in July.  He's been hanging in there and has had a hospital bed set up at home.  He was admitted to the hospital on Wednesday, October 24th and has gone downhill significantly each day.  My mom didn't think he would make it through the weekend.  I wasn't too sure either but here we are at Monday morning.  It has been a very difficult thing to watch. I am confident of his faith in our Heavenly Father and His Messiah but he is obviously struggling hard for life.  He is still understandable to some degree and I know he knew it was me with him in the room last night.  The hardest part was him saying he wants to die at home but we know he won't be coming home.  They were going to set up hospice starting today but I think it would be too much for my mom to handle here by herself...and she doesn't want the kids to see my dad the way he is now.  It was pretty hard for me to see also.  Our mentor/spiritual daddy passed away exactly this time last year and it's too reminiscent of everything he went through at the end.  But on some positive note seeing him prepared me to deal with what my dad looks like right now.  He was so independent and stubborn as far as doing what he wanted to do that it's so hard to watch him stuck in a bed struggling to breathe. He's on a morphine pump and hasn't eaten in three + days.  He hasn't had any fluid since Friday so it doesn't seem like he could hang on much longer.  The body has an amazing will to fight for life.

Obviously the kids haven't done anything in the way of school since we've been here.  We've gone to the library down the street but mainly so they can get a new video to watch.  If I see Peter Pan one more time, I think I'll scream.

My dad's funeral wishes are to have a Methodist ceremony in the church and have Jeff do a Messianic Jewish burial ceremony outside.  I plan to share inside the church about my dad and his love for Israel and the Torah of his Messiah.  Should be an interesting audience to share that with (mostly Methodist and deep Southern Baptist)...but I don't care.  I just hope I can get through it ok.

I guess I just wanted to type all this out to be able to look back on it somewhere down the road.

It's good to know that some of my other blogging friends haven't said much lately either. :)  Are we all really busy or is life just flying by too fast to sit in front of the computer?

Our baby turned one last Friday.  He's had a nasty cold or congestion, etc for over two weeks now.  We were trying to do everything to treat it naturally (GOOT-garlic oil ointment, cherry bark, homeopathy, sambucol, echinacea,....the whole works).  But my heart couldn't take how hard he seems to be struggling to breathe when he's coughing so we broke down and got antibiotics yesterday.  You have to know the mind wrestling I went through just to take him to the doctor.  I get more worried about them getting sick from being in the waiting room and dealing with a sick-care provider who only knows how to treat symptoms, not actually promote health.  I'll get off my soapbox now.  Hopefully we'll see some improvement in the next couple of days.  We've been blessed to not have to deal with too much sickness in our kids, especially at this young age.  It just takes the wind out of our sails.

We've finished studying trees and rounded it out today with learning about fig trees and coloring/pasting some different pictures of fig trees.  Did you know they are mentioned 33 times in the Bible?  Lydia corrected my aleph (the first Hebrew letter).  She learned how to write it in children's class last Shabbat and didn't think I was doing it right.  Hey, hers looked better than mine so we'll go with it!  We were writing Vayera in Hebrew which is this week's Torah portion...it's Genesis 18-22.

It's freezing today...about 62 outside.  We finally have some rain but according to the radio we're still have an 18 inch deficit.  It's scary to think that we are dependent on the government for our water and they think they only have a 3 month supply on hand.  I'm trying to see if DH will consider digging a well.  He says when things get bad we'll just head to the country (meaning his hometown where his dad has a lake cabin).  Time will tell...

Time to get off this thing and figure out what I'm going to make for dinner.

I wanted to post more photos from our celebrations of the feasts of trumpets, atonement and tabernacles...but it was taking so long so here's a link to all of my photos from the last few weeks.

http://www.flickr.com/gp/13915565@N02/vp15xu

We're back in the groove now and have been learning all about trees the last three days.  Off to the library now to see what else we can find.  The weather is supposed to drop by about ten degrees tomorrow so we'll actually have a taste of fall.  I can't wait!

We just came off a wonderful Sukkot (feast of Tabernacles).  I had planned to get back into the swing of a structured day today but Lydia and Jonah both have colds (Jonah's first :()

We're starting a unit on trees so I just read a little bit in our Children's Encyclopedia and we went around the house pointing out everything made from a tree.  I'm letting the glass nipple babysit right now while they watch a Curious George.

We didn't really do everything I had planned out for the Atonement (blood) unit but then Lydia said she wanted to learn about bones in the body.  And now with trees she says she wants to do a unit on flowers.  Is this what they call Delight-Directed learning?  Hopefully I can go with the flow.

Not a lot on the horizon now except for three birthdays looming in the next 7 weeks and a tight wallet.  Thanks to grandma the kids will have very memorable birthdays.  Jonah is first up next Friday.  I can't believe he'll be one.

Here are some pics from our two weeks plus of feasting!

We've been learning about the Day of Atonement (AKA Yom Kippur) all week.  It's been exciting to see the light pop on in Lydia's head as I see her understand some things that we're discussing.  Our two words of the week are blood and grace.  We've talked a lot about why and how Yeshua shed His blood for us and, in turn, learning the science side of blood by looking at our "First Encyclopedia of the Human Body".   The weather has been wonderful---breezy and low 80s which to us feels like a brisk fall day.  So we went outside to take pictures of any creatures that have blood in them...basically anything alive.  We talked about Deuternomy 12:23--that the life is in the blood.  So here goes my attempt at posting pictures!

Can you see the fly?

This one is the kids' favorite.

This one was really hard to take so I'm proud of myself.  I had to use the digital zoom on my new camera (birthday present from MIL) and it was hard to hold it steady for how high up this bird was.

This is Lydia with her best little friend, Gracie on the swing Daddy just hung from a tree last weekend.  It's not really related other than I took it this week and I think it's a great picture!

Couldn't have a shot of Lydia without adding one of the boys too.  This was after our very hot afternoon on the tennis court about two weeks ago.

I'm so thrilled I can upload photos now!  I'll try not to do it overkill but I might go a little nuts for a few days.

And the traditional Jewish blessing (in English) for Yom Kippur is : May we all be sealed in the Book of Life!  Praise our Heavenly Father that through the blood of His son we are!  But let's not use that as a "get out of jail free" ticket and neglect to love our neighbor and keep our Messiah's commandments.  It is a blessing and honor that through His atonement we are set free to keep His instructions for life!

OK, that's all my preaching for tonight...and if you know me, you know I'm really not the preachy type (at least I don't think I am...)

We've now finished our first unit and the first two weeks of school.  I meant to blog daily but obviously that hasn't happened.  I guess I did the math pretty closely.  Our unit (Feast of Trumpets: Praise and Worship unit) was broken up into 6 days and it took about two weeks.  We only do school Mon-Thurs and leave Friday to prepare for Shabbat so the schedule worked out well.  Lydia was into coloring the picture of Miriam dancing with the timbrel and she liked learning the new scripture verses.  We learned a new song in sign language but she balked at it the first time we did it.  We also read aloud a book about different musical instruments used around the world and watched a video about the five senses.  Jonah is so sweet and quiet the whole time that we could do school even longer if I wanted to.  But the challenge is keeping Lathan engaged.  He wants to play the computer and nothing else.  I had some success getting him to write his letters and color on the chalkboard.  He didn't want to color any of the same pages that Lydia did.  I got him a special Lightning McQueen magna doodle and I put it away in hopes of bringing it out just for school time.  We'll see how it goes this week.


This coming week will be the Day of Atonement unit study--it focuses on grace and blood.  It works out perfectly since the Day of Atonement/Yom Kippur is this Friday night to Saturday night.  I think this will be the first year Lydia will be able to understand the general principles behind this holiest day of the year.  This day is such a profound reminder of our need for a Redeemer.  By "afflicting" (Lev 23) ourselves through fasting (I will probably eat rice or noodles, etc since I'm nursing Jonah full time), we can really get a grasp of the seriousness of our sin and the suffering our Messiah endured in our place.  I just hope I can effectively teach the importance of this moed (appointed time) to our children.  Thankfully, wherever I lack in explaining things to them, Daddy picks right up and gives a wonderful illustration. 

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, Lydia and Lathan both blow the shofar better than I do.  Their scriptures for the last two weeks were : Psalm 95:1 and Psalm 100:2.  I have to figure out lesson plans tomorrow so I have no idea what their scripture for this week will be.  I hope I learn how to post pictures soon.

Jonah started crawling over the last two days.  He's been slowly scooting for a couple of weeks but we've finally witnessed a full-fledged crawl.  He'll be 11 months in 4 days.  Lathan crawled at 8 months and Lydia crawled at 1 year so Jonah's right in the middle.  But Jeff's mom is convinced that he's already saying "Bubbe" which is what the kids call her.

Since Jeff had to go into work today, we decided to go ahead and start our new homeschool year.  Things went pretty well, after the fact.  I guess I was expecting fireworks of fascination from Lydia but in hindsight I'm just thankful I held her attention for almost an hour.  We talked about the Feast of Trumpets/Rosh Hashanah coming up and about what the words praise and worship mean in the Bible.  Then we looked up 5 Bible verses with the words "sing" or "singing" in them.  This part was the toughest on keeping her mind occupied.  I finally just dotted the words "praise" and "worship" for her to trace while I looked up the scriptures.  Then we picked the one we wanted to be our memory verse for the week.  It is Psalm 95:1 : O Come let us sing joyfully to the LORD.

She then colored a picture of Miriam dancing with her timbrel and we read the verse about Miriam's song from Exodus 15:20-21.  She did such a nice job coloring that we put it in her journal.  THen we did our counting coins in the cup and the calendar page.  That was fun since we started a new month.  She was tired so we didn't do her reading lesson from "Reading Made Easy" but instead played a game with her phonics flashcards and worked on some blends: br, pr, pl, st,... 

Jonah did great the whole time with his blocks and Lathan did pretty well...I only had to holler at him once to get away from the computer.  It's really a challenge with him.  He loves to be outside but if he's inside all he wants to do is play his games on the computer.  I'm looking for the perfect toy/activity to keep him happy during hs-ing.  He likes to write his letters on the chalkboard but that only occupies him for a few minutes.

Now they're outside washing the truck with Daddy since he came home early-hooray!  Jonah's asleep in the swing so Mommy is treating herself to some computer time.  Tonight Jeff and I get to play tug-of-war with the remote to fight between ACC college football and the US Open Round of 16.  We don't watch much TV but this time of year is a challenge with what sports nuts we both are.

So, day 1 of official Kindergarten is complete...can't wait to see what day 2 has in store!

This shall count as my official schedule (that will probably be changed 18 times before December):

Basically this is my own eclectic (that word really means undecided) blend of Heart of Wisdom and My Father's World with some Ruth Beechick techniques thrown in.

Instead of doing it by the dates, I'm going to organize by lessons or units.  Each unit is for 6 days. The units have a corresponding character trait/Bible verse or topic but this is just the simplified list:

1.Feast of Trumpets-Praise & Worship Unit	14. Butterfly unit
2.Atonement-Grace Unit	15. Water unit
3. Feast of Tabernacles-Tree unit	16. Creation unit (MFW-dinosaur)
4.Sun unit	17. Rock unit
5. Moon unit	18. Turtle unit
6. Hanukkah-Oil unit	19. Elephant unit
7. Purim- Fruit unit	20. Goat unit
8. Passover - Lamb unit	21. Penguin unit
9. Unleavened Bread- Bread unit	22. Horse unit
10. First Fruits/Omer- Plants unit	23. Nest unit
11. Shavuot-Law unit	24. Cow unit
12. Vegetables unit	25. Kangaroo unit
13. Insect unit	26. Frog unit

(wow, I actually added a table.  Maybe one of these days I'll advance all the way to pasting photos)

Our daily schedule (I hope) is this:

*Shacrit (morning prayer time)

*Bible story/ Character Trait (usually goes along with unit)

*Unit (which includes vocab word of the day, weekly memory verse, read aloud, phonics/dictation, lesson or activity from HOW step 1-4)

*Math : calendar page, coin in cup, toy clock, math game or sheet

*Journaling from day's activities (whatever Lydia wants to draw or write about, cut and paste, etc)

*Reading Made Easy Book (maybe in afternoons--she likes it but it takes a lot of her concentration so I'm trying to figure out where to fit it in)

1x/2x a week, Hebrew audio or computer program

1x a week, Music

1x a week (depending on units), arts and crafts

All of this really won't take more than 45 min-1 hour based on previous experience.  If it does, I'll have to rework it.  Creating a love for learning is more important than my getting everything checked off. 

Later I may post what an actual unit looks like day by day. I've finished the lesson plans for our first one so I'll try to type it out soon.

It's nice to have this written out.  It will be even nicer to know that this plan is a fit for our family.  Time will tell.......

It's 11:35 pm.  I'm not usually up this late but my 10 month old really didn't want to go to sleep tonight.  It will be my birthday in 25 minutes.  I'm almost 31.  I always remembered that being the age my mom was when I was born.  She was the career woman from day 1 and just retired two years ago.  It's funny now to think that at the same age I have three children and have started our first year of homeschooling.

I thought about staying up all night and cleaning the house from top to bottom--garage, basement, clean the kitchen, vacuum, dust,...the works.  And then wake up to a day that we could spend any way we wanted.  Ignore the fact that I would be completely exhausted by daybreak, and that I've never stayed up all night my whole life (except when I was in labor).  So, just think.  The kids and I wake up and eat breakfast.  I have the whole house spotless, lesson plans checked off for the next year, so what do we do now?  I'd like to think we'd spend the day playing and reading all kinds of inspirational and educational things.  Maybe we'd sew and play tennis and learn some Hebrew and a new song to dance to.  Maybe I'd fix the chain on Lydia's bike and play outside for 5 or 6 hours.  So why don't we just do those things anyway and ignore the silly house?  Because I have to get it checked off my list, that's why!!!  I can't stand the thought of my husband coming home to a messy house even though it sucks the life right out of me to clean it so much.  Maybe now that I see what we're missing out on, I can reprioritize and spend less time cleaning, more time living.  My kids do have their respective chores but it's nothing like some of the things I've read on other blogs.  Maybe it's because I don't know the ages of other people's children and mine are still pretty young.  I let them help with laundry and setting and clearing the table, cleaning their rooms, making their beds, stuff like that.  But I'm not quite ready to hand over the sweeping and bathroom cleaning, taking the trash out stuff just yet.

I just realized this is really late for me and I will laugh with embarassment when I read back through the ramblings I just wrote. 

On a good note, I'm almost ready to post our homeschool schedule for the year.  I'm pretty excited about it and making my own lesson plans (with a lot of help from H.O.W.) has been easier than I thought.

I'm also excited that the 16 yo daughter of our dear friends is starting a magazine to encourage young women (ages 12+) in their pursuit of the Heavenly Father and waiting for the husband HE has picked out for them.  I may attempt to write some articles for it and if it sounds of interest to you or a family you know, I'll be glad to forward the informational email on to you.

OK, going to sleep now.  I'll blog again about how we actually spend our day tomorrow.

10 minutes until my birthday (although technically I think I was born around 7 pm on August 29, 1976)!!! 

I know we all must suffer from some degree of "schoolitis"--that is, where we think we must re-create the school environment that we have purposefully removed our children from in order to teach them at home.  I know I am randomly plagued by this illness, particularly when I read others' blogs where their entire day is mapped out to-the-minute and all of a sudden I start to compare.  Wow, what a slacko I must be.  And then I repent for comparing our family to another family who G-d created completely different with a different purpose in mind.  I am so thankful for Robin Sampson and the Heart of Wisdom.  Whenever my mind starts to race and wonder that I'm not doing enough for my kids, her HOW Teaching Approach book brings me back to reality.  The greatest thing we can impart onto our children is wisdom and if we can achieve that in this homeschool journey, then I think we've succeeded beyond measure.  Now along the way I know that phonics, math, reading, history, science and the arts will absorb into my children but I need to make sure (for myself and for my children) that those entities are part of the journey, not the destination.

Our family is a bit different than most on this blog...I would assume.  We keep the Biblical festivals as described in Leviticus 23; we eat kosher (clean animals); we celebrate the weekly Sabbath from Friday night to Saturday night; and we haven't celebrated Christmas or Easter in at least 5 years.  Basically, we are a Torah observant family fully centered on Yeshua (Jesus) our Messiah as the basis for how we live our lives.  I don't say all that to get landblasted and to defend our convictions...I can do that in another post.  I say that to explain the background behind how we plan to structure our homeschool days.

We've been doing Kindergarten since April.  I homeschool year-round and I was thinking that I would go from Jan-Dec.  But now I see some difficulties have arisen with that idea.  I guess it would be better for Lydia and my other children to start at about the same time as the rest of the homeschool (and non-homeschooling) world.  So instead of starting at the beginning of the Gregorian new year, we will start each school year at Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets.  This year it is in mid-September. It's always September-October but varies each year because the Hebrew calendar is a lunar-solar and our Gregorian is solar. 

I was pushing for Lydia to be ready for My Father's World first grade in January but I had to rethink my purpose in that. First, will she be ready?  Probably.  But should I rush her simply because I want to try to stay ahead of the game? Absolutely not.  So we will have a nice, somewhat relaxed extended year of kindergarten which is what she would be starting right now if she were in government schools anyway.  Who says school is exactly 13 years total anyway?  We know some homeschoolers who were halfway through college coursed by age 16.  Not that college is our intended destination for our children but I think that "schoolitis" disease creeps in to tell us to meet the world's time frame on education.  As long as our children love and serve the Lord, we have met our homeschooling goals.  Smart offspring will simply be icing on the cake.

I told Jeff we need to think of a name for our Homeschool since I've seen it over and over in TOS magazine for ID cards, transcripts, just for fun, and whatever.  We haven't thought of it yet but we did come up with a mission/vision statement for our homeschool after an incredibly inspiring weekend in the hills of Lobelville, TN with some beloved friends.  So here it is:

To build a legacy of generations who will change the world for the kingdom of Elohim (G-d).

Simple, straight-forward, not as fancy as you might have hoped...but that is our desire for our children.  It's intimidating and exciting that HE has entrusted me with teaching these precious babes.  I hope I'm up to it!

Oops-I forgot to include our schedule.  I'll have to do that on the next one.  The kiddos want an afternoon treat so I'd better get off this computer monster of an attention snatcher.

Now there's a word I never knew before yesterday.  And now it's a word that's caused more headache than you can imagine.  How difficult can it be to resize a photo to meet Avatar regulations?  Obviously too difficult for this mama.

I realize that at the speed I process different thoughts, it's easier for me to begin blogging my putting thoughts out there in bulleted points.  Hopefully one day soon I'll graduate to the paragraph level of communication!

• This morning Lydia (my 5yo) woke up with a terrible earache.  I really didn't even want to get out of bed until I realized she really was in a lot of pain.  None of my children have ever had an ear infection which I completely attribute to the grace of the Almighty showing me the glories of breastfeeding from day 1 with each child.  So I really wasn't sure what to do this morning and as I was dozing in and out telling my body that it had to get up (mind you, I'm up many-a-time during the night nursing my 9 month old), I thought of garlic.  And then I found a wonderful and simple-to-use website with an easy garlic oil recipe that included using GSE (grapefruit seed extract).  The website is www.learningherbs.com.   Lydia fussed and hollered but let me put the drops in and she stayed still for the 15-20 minutes it was supposed to sit in her ear.  I will confess to turning on the glass nipple to keep her mind off of her ear.  After about an hour of crying off and on, she fell asleep.  She woke up maybe an hour later to come and tell me that her ear was all better.  Hallelujah!  The L-rd has such grace in our lives...He knows I can't function well with sick children. 

OK, now that I see how long my first bulleted point went on, I will graduate myself to paragraph status.  And now I'll just have to tolerate how many random topics I do within one blog.  Maybe I'll just have separate blogs for each of my topics I want to type about.  Hmmm, what a brilliant idea so this will conclude my earache and avatar musings. 

Shalom to me...because at this point I know I must be the only person reading this stuff.

Did I really just start a blog? 

I first heard this term in TOS magazine over a year ago and thought, "how on earth do homeschooling moms have time to write these things?".  And now I've given in to the peer pressure to start one myself.  I've been inspired reading the entries of other moms.  I'm just hoping it makes me more organized and creates a desire to keep a record of all the cool stuff we're doing this year in our homeschooling adventure.  OK, now I have to live up to the "cool stuff" expectation.

My babes are 5 and three quarters, 3 and three quarters and almost 10 months.  Is that a complicated way to say that my daughter is almost 6, my oldest son almost 4, and our sweet baby boy is closing in on 10 months old?  My oldest is in kindergarten, officially.  Unlike most everyone I know, we're not starting school this month.  We do the year-round thing so that I don't have to stress out about fitting in everything I hope to cover in just 9 months.  Truthfully, I would so love to be the "relaxed", "delight-directed"," laid back" homeschooling mom...but I can't!  Is that lack of faith or love of structure?  Hopefully not the former and I'm pretty sure it's more of the latter.  Plus, if we get behind one day, my dd does not hesitate to remind me at 9 o'clock at night that we need to do school.  OK, yes, when daylight savings is over, my children are in bed before 9pm.  Uh, most nights.

Well, I guess that's enough to suffice for my first blog.  I look forward to sharing more later about our lives and our daily happenings.  We just got home from a 4 day trip so time to unpack...more about my trip to come. 

Laila Tov!  (Good night in Hebrew).