I think by now, I told you every piece of interesting information that happened in each day.

Today it felt just like groundhog day…

Repetition of the same day with same chores and activities, some more life skills & meal preparation… that’s it.

I ran out of inventions or my creativity is blocked. I also ran out art supplies and fruit & veggies. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll stock up…

I woke up early, as usual. Woke my kids up for another remote school day.
Had my coffee & started working a little… had enough very quickly.

After 30 days I decided to go out for shopping. It was 9am, nearly no one was driving. Awkward.

Went in the car, put the radio on. The sun was shining. My roses are growing, It felt so good to be outside.
OMG how I missed it…

Went down to coles, post office and another shop in the area.

Then decided to get us some treats from another special place, we deserve it.

Aren’t we all?!

Holocaust memorial day.

My Saba Israel Mondry z”l survived the horrors of Hitler and the Nazis. He was 14 when the war started. His chassidic family was very big. He had brothers, sisters and grandparents.
These are their names: Abraham-Saul, Sarah, Trivia, Leah, Berish, Mordechai, Rachel, Esther.

He was smuggled and sent to work in the kitchen, that’s how he survived… He never saw his family again. After the war, he came to Israel, then he found out his sister, who apparently survived as well and lived in USA.

I started the day looking at some name lists from Ghetto Lodz and locations, hoping to find more than what we have (which is this one photo below).

Now I can tell you that it all started when I was 17. Yes, years ago. When I wanted to go on March of the Living, and I shared the fact with my Saba. He was furious. How can I step on that horrific soil? I might step on his family’s blood. You can understand he refused.
I gave it a year. In that year he opened up and told us his story of those times of war.
We managed to videotape it, which is so good, before shortly after that he got sick and passed away.

A year later I went on March of the Living and it changed me forever.
When you see everything behind glass in Auschwitz, you understand how bad it was. And the Ash Mountain… just breaks you to pieces. Then you go to Treblinka and see the amounts of stones that symbolise the communities that were vanished, but when you enter Meidanek and see the piles of shoes… and smell the leather… It hits you back: the sheer amount of people who died there….

I promised myself to remember that forever.

Started the morning with 2 kids needing to wake up for online school. I had no time for coffee.

After they had breakfast and started school, I finally sat down with my huge cup of coffee in front of the computer.

Well, I thought I might have more time to myself. I was wrong.
Still had to cook and put the washing machine on… then made lunch and a healthy juice for everyone.

Later on, my husband went down to Woolies to get some yogourt & milk and came back with a huge Lego, a jigsaw puzzle and a family game.

We all now have something to look forward to for the weekends.

The little things that make you happy…

Friday was a very special day.
We had baguettes and garlic bread after more than 8 days eating matzah.

It tasted like heaven.

Not just because it was special, but because after more than 20 days of lockdown, we actually got dressed, put our shoes on (that felt weird) and went in the car. Drove to get our annual flu shot.

That didn’t take long… but we missed this feeling of going out.

I actually couldn’t bear the thought of another Shabbat, but this Shabbat was the most amazing one we had so far.

My daughter was so bored and wanted to sing and make music, yes I know it’s Shabbat and we can’t do a lot… but we decided to try fill wine glasses with water and make them a sort of a piano. It was actually very good!
We managed to “play” the Yehonatan Ha’katan tune and do some fun sounds with it. It was amazing!

Then my daughter had an idea to create face masks and all we had to do was apply it on our faces. She asked who’s joining her, surprisingly we all did (even the boys!)
We tried 2 recipes: honey & coffee, and honey & cinnamon. We applied them on our faces and couldn’t stop laughing. We looked like a monkey family with all our faces in 2 colours of brown.
It was hilarious, not only that… it actually felt so nice, our skin was very smooth. It was definitely worth the mess.

Then we kept playing, went for a walk around the block. And played ping pong again.

And BAM Shabbat was over.

Had a quick coffee. Woke up my daughter to start her school day (remote learning via Zoom).

Started cooking, by the time I finished it was 1pm, so we had lunch. Spoke to my family, had a chat with a friend or two. And it was chag AGAIN.

The next day, the sun came out again so we sat in the sun for an hour playing. It was fun, all day and the day after we were busy playing all sorts of games: Rummicub, checkers, chess & ping pong,
We also read some books and more. Most of the time we ate though…

Time flies when you have fun.

Now.. I’m going to pack away the Pesach dishes.
Finally It’s over.

Let’s drink to that!

After the Nurofen I took last night, I slept so well that I woke up early, tried to walk and saw that I’m much better.

The sun was already there smiling. I made myself a coffee in the quiet, before everyone else wakes up. By the way, that quiet time in the morning is the cure for me.

Went to water the veggie patch, then my daughter woke up as well and we read her book together. Later on, she found a hack on YouTube how to dye your hair with food colouring, please don’t call me crazy, but I agreed to do it with her… very exciting. We did it. And waited. We had to wait for 2 hours. Then washed it. And unfortunately it all washed out. She was so disappointed, so she decided to straighten her hair instead.

Then we shot some slow motion videos. It was fun and funny.

After dinner we decided to watch ‘The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, fantastic family movie.

Tomorrow is the first day of school term 2 for one of them (& my cooking day).

Very Exciting…

Today was just another day… tried to avoid housework. Until I saw the washing… I couldn’t resist that pile. It was huge (which I can’t understand the reason for, because we aren’t going anywhere… weird.)

Since everyone was still asleep when I finished with the laundry, I sat in front of the computer trying to get some work done – something I didn’t get to do in the last 14 days…
finished what I wanted and I was very happy about it.

Then the kids woke up and I did some art and some assembling kits with them.

We then made lunch & dinner and as soon as I sat down (not before..) my back got stuck in a way I couldn’t move.
Really? I thought to myself. Couldn’t it have happened before?

So I Took a shower and got a hot water bottle and went to bed.

I guess it’s time to get some rest after this Chag.

After the Pesach week started, we could finally relax.

We sat to the table saying the Haggadah which is the story of the Jewish people escaping Egypt. We were describing the 10 plagues the Egyptian got, in order to allow the Israelites to go free. And here we are, sitting with our core family, can’t get out of our houses, can’t go to shul or see friends. Just because of a new age plague.

Anyway it made us rethink our existence and stop.

Yom Tov was long, but there was plenty of food as always…

Luckily, we had so many games in the house, so when the sun came out we played table tennis and frisbee. Remember I told you about the dobble game I made? It was a big hit. Fantastic game. We played it so many times it was definitely worth the effort.

My daughter had a holiday homework: reading the book “The witch, the lion and the wardrobe” so we printed off 9 chapters to start with… and we actually finished reading what we printed. Which is a great progress.

It all seemed like a one very long day.

Fun, but glad it’s over.