Shana Tova!

That's Happy New Year in Hebrew!

It's a start of a new year according to the Jewish Calendar and we celebrated with the family including special OS guests Saba and Ada.

Rosh Hashana (New Year) means a number of things in my family.

First and foremost my mother insists on getting new outfits. The fact she can no longer force me to buy, or buy for me a new twin set of sorts has meant that Mia and Poppy are on the receiving end of this long held obsession. She also believes it's a time to spring clean the house (again). Spring cleaning is more than simply conducting a thorough dusting or cleaning out a few cupboards, according to my mother anything short of a full inside (and potentially outside) paint job is your personal failure to welcome in the new year (and what will the community say about that?). Well, I failed here.

It's also of course a time to get together with the family and as per all other festivals, EAT (especially the sweet stuff to signify a sweet year)! And eat we did, and then we ate some more. Dinner at my sister's was delicious as usual (and extra yummy as we watched Mia add another boyfriend to her expanding collection).

I'm a great believer that how you begin something, is often how you finish. If that is the case, then the coming Jewish year should look like this:

Lots of: Time with family, food (especially chocolate, see time with family), laughs, worry (I'll come back to that one), outings, art and culture, procrastinations...... (again, I'll come back to that one), wins (Go Hawks, you make Luke so happy!) and most importantly NACHES (Naches definition: A type of pleasure that can only be derived from one's children or grand children)!
Not enough of: Sleep, time for Luke and I and time for myself, time for friends, I think I see a theme here: TIME!

So its been a hectic couple of weeks, mainly revolving around my dad and Ada. It's always an intense period as we try and squeeze 18 months into two weeks including some heartfelt conversations and bonding time for the girls. The highlights were many, including trips to the city (this is Mia at the Dream Festival, and Dad and Ada and the Deco exhibition), a visit to the children's garden at the botanic gardens, dinner at Mirka's, sharing Poppy's first solids meal (rejected) and indulging as a family in some serious bad Jew behaviour by visiting St Paul's Cathedral on Yom Kippur (day of atonement, holiest day on the Jewish calendar).

But more than anything else was seeing Dad and Ada with the girls. Everyday moments shared with them are so rare and precious, my heart melted in these ordinary occasions such as bed and bath time.


They are leaving today and as usual I feel tense and sad and can't help but think about all the things we didn't do.... these photos however, help to remind me of the great times we did share.



Their stay concludes our visitor parade which commenced way back in April, it's been fun.