Purim Arrives!! And so much more.....

I assure you that I will tell you all about our first Purim as Israelis but a few things transpired before Purim so we must go in order......

First, I have officially finished ulpan! That's right folks, I took the test and said "shalom". The day of the test was quite interesting. I would like to preface the story by tell all the readers of this blog that my sister has cursed ulpan test day forever. All of those who read her awesome blog - AliyahbyAccident.blogspot.com - know that her child and husband were both sick on the day of the ulpan test. You see, the test is given from 1 to 4 p.m. and I had planned to keep Tani in the tzaharon (afternoon) program at gan so that I would be able to take the test. I was very happy with this plan seeing as I could do my food shopping in the morning and take the test in the afternoon, and then the day came - du du duuuu. I was giving Tani breakfast, trying to memorize the hipheels and hoophals, and realized that his left eye looked slightly swollen and red. I then remembered that when we put him to bed the night before, he had had some gunk in his eye that I had thought nothing of at the time. Well, now it was pink eye - du du duuuu. I knew that I would be unable to take him to gan so I immediately called my in-laws. To make a long story short - it ended up being a long day of shipping Tani to and from the doctor and my in-law's house so that I could get done what I needed to. The test went pretty ok, I hope, and I'll let you know when the results come in.

Now, onto Purim! So I don't know how many of you know this but "Purim" as an ideal is about 2 weeks long and the chag itself is actually 3 entire days. I know, incredible! The things you learn when you make aliyah. Basically they prep the kids at gan for about a week before (there are more intense preparations as the kids gets older) and then there is no gan on Taanit Esther, Purim, or Shushan Purim. 3 whole days. Really long days. On Sunday all the kids had to come to gan dressed in their costumes for the Mesibat Purim. It was so cute walking my little dragon to gan and seeing all the other kids walking to school in costumes. When I picked him up he came with a whole bagful of Purim paraphernalia. They had made a megilla with a toilet paper roll holder (fancy, I know), a ra'ashan (grogger), mishloach manot, and hamantashen. Tani was totally in love with his megilla but I'm pretty sure his favorite part was watching as I rolled it up every 2 minutes. However, the best line he had the entire Purim was when I was folding up the megillah (for the billionth time) and he started saying - "bad man, bad man" while pointing to Haman. I asked him "what's the bad man's name" and he said - "Hamantashen". Gotta love it.

Purim day was a lot of fun. It was really beautiful weather here despite people saying it was going to rain - sunny with a nice, cool breeze. We delivered mishloach manot and got to eat lots of candy (I did most of the candy eating, I'll admit it, I'm not ashamed. Don't judge me). Tani was a little perturbed at first that he had to give away our shiny mishloach manot but he recovered quickly when he realized that he can have someone else's shiny bag in return. After a nice nap (we actually all fell into a Purim candy coma) we headed off for our seudah. We did a pot-luck seudah at a friend's house with 4 other couples and it was great. There was, of course, waaaay too much food but the kids (and adults) all had a great time. On Shushan Purim, I went with a friend and her son (the same age as Tani) to a Purim carnival in the neighborhood - music, food, games - the usual.

All-in-all, a very successful first Purim in Israel although we truly missed hosting our Purim seudah that we have hosted for the past few years. And we definitely missed all of our friends in Washington Heights. We hope to see you all here next year!!