The weekend

was actually nice. Sunday was not the most accomplished of my days, but more on that in a bit.

Despite the lateness of our shoppitude, all the food was succesfully cooked. Cholent went up and turned out delicious, matzah balls were done on time, and family arrived with time to spare. A nice dinner and the kids actually in bed by 9PM. Like morons, however, the adults stayed up talking until midnight, so we were a little wiped the next day.

Especially given that a certain small person arrived in our bed sometime around 2:30 AM. I actually didn't notice until she started kicking me at 5:30AM, which got some extremely grouchy grunts out of me. Eventually we all dragged ourselves out of bed, got kidlets breakfasted, and everyone aside from Mrs. Skinny headed off to services.

Mostly peace & quiet at services, although youngest (clearly underslept) hung around at the beginning, half asleep on my shoulder. She disappeared off to groups after a while, returning later towards the end of services. Which would have been fine, except I was leading services at the time and she came over, quietly but insistently requesting I remove a lollipop wrapper for her. The presence of her uncle nearby, who offered to take care of her helped not a whit, so I led and unwrapped at the same time. Mind you, I've never led services in recent years WITHOUT one of them in my arms, hanging on me, or whispering loudly about whatever they need. I managed not to screw up anyway.

Lunch involved some other friends we invited, which was fine except my sister in law is quite the liberal and the husband of the friends (though I didn't know this before) quite the conservative, but after the initial salvos we got off politics and lunch was lovely. By the time it ended it was time for afternoon services, then a little more home until the end of Shabbos, when the cousins & all decamped for home.