Happy New Year!

 The Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) happened upon us over the weekend.  So instead of our usual game night Friday evening, we made shofars!  Now a shofar is traditionally made from a ram's horn... but we're fresh out of real ones.  And the rams horns we've had have not been very grand and glorious anyways.  So here are the kids coloring their shofar pieces.  Then they "sewed" the pieces together with yarn... that was a bit tricky for them.  No pictures because I was busy undoing crazy knots.

 Once the 2 pieces were sewn together, we stuffed part of a toilet paper roll in one end, the blower of a party horn in the other, a few drinking straws through the whole deal to keep it stiff and let them wail!

Just before my sweet neighbor was about to run screaming back home, we silenced the shofars and settled in for a couple Rosh Hashanah stories.  My favorite was "The Day the Chickens Went on Strike".  Its a humorous tale about some chickens going on strike from being used for Kapores.  In then end, the village people decide to just try to be better people and not swing a chicken over their heads to take away their sins.

 Then Sunday evening at dinner, we each decided what we did this past year that was good.  Gloria learned to read really well.  Aaron became a puzzle master.  Nathan learned to go potty.  And Cap'n K also learned to go potty.  Then we talked about what we're going to do better this year.  For Gloria, she's going to try to not get so sassy.  Aaron is going to try to be diligent and work hard even when its things he doesn't want to do.  Nathan is going to try to not be so disruptive during school time (but since he still doesn't talk that great, that was my dictate on him... it didn't come from the heart).  Cap'n K is going to try to not bite or hit anymore.

Right at sunset (when the new year occurred... which for the record is much more conducive to my sleep schedule than the whole Jan 1 midnight thing), the kids all blew their shofars again.  The shofar tells us to WAKE UP!  We have to honor God with our actions and not get lazy in our wrong-doings.  There was enough noise to wake the whole neighborhood up... but since it was only 7:30, all was well.

Ask us next year how we did at improving ourselves!