First Shabbos

Our first shabbos here was beautiful. There is no other way to describe it. J said it best when we were out walking right after candle lighting and heard the siren: “Imma, I wish that we could bring our friends and family here to see this!” Totally.

We had many erev shabbos visitors with cakes and cookies, bagels and nosh, flowers, etc.  A neighbor also brought over a welcome bag from the shul with great info inside (which restaurants deliver, etc.) plus matches, candles, havdalah candle, grape   juice and matches. It was perfect. 

Also a big highlight on Fridays is going to the “merkaz” to do shabbos shopping, but mostly the kids enjoyed seeing how many people stopped that knew us! It really is amazing to come back here with so many friends already here! The kids fully gorged themselves on whatever candy they could buy with the money they had earned from doing a few erev shabbos chores. I’m hoping the Kosher candy novelty will wear off soon. We figure if we let them get pretty much anything for a few more days they’ll get sick of it on their own .

 BAW drove the boys over to shul for early mincha at 6 (in Saba’s car) and J and I lit candles. Right before then, N’s abcess finally burst and to say the least, it was not pretty, but BH he was really on the mend once that happened. As I type, he is busy yelling at me and standing on the table trying to hit the keys on my keyboard. Yep, pretty much back to normal, BH.

We went to BAW’s aunt for both meals, and had a truly restful and wonderful shabbos.  BAW and Uncle S took the big boys for a hike up in the mountain across the street from our house after mincha and afterwards I took all the kids out on a walk to find some other kids. Just one block away is a very happening block, and the 3 older ones actually asked me if they could stay and I didn’t see them until shabbos was almost over! TPH told me not to worry, but you always worry about kids making friends when you move. With all the kids in this neighborhood, it would be hard NOT to find friends.

We are love, LOVE, LOVING Ramat Shiloh. It’s a new area right next to Ramat Beit Shemesh, and so far looks like a great place for us, BH. But more on that later. BAW just took 4/6 to Yerushalaim for a modem and router, so that maybe by tomorrow we might finally have some internet. 

It’s like the dark ages over here.