Long voting lines = absentee ballot for me

After several attempts to vote early, I finally gave up on the long lines. I am of the opinion that waiting 3 to 4 hours to vote is ludicrous. (BTW Kendall, the area mentioned in the article, happens to be the suburb of Miami that we live in.) I don't think Florida will ever be able to shake the whole voting nightmare thing. And I wonder if my absentee ballot will end up being a part of another voting nightmare...only time will tell.

And if you are wondering who I voted for...all I will say is that I stand with Israel.

Couldn't you just eat her?

I visited with my sister this weekend and got to see my new niece...isn't she the cutest thing? She almost makes me want to adopt another...I said almost! (Cause you know LO would never stand for that!)

My little lulav shaker

Whew! We made it through the chagim! Here's a picture of LO at Hebrew School - that poor lulav had to endure a whole slew of kids shaking it like CRAZY. I was sure we would be looking at an un-kosher etrog before it was all over but miraculously the pitom survived!

Hectic Holidays

As I am sure they are for most, the holidays have been pretty hectic for us. We didn't help any by having our honeymoon end erev Rosh Hashanah. Thankfully we had many offers for meals and Rosh Hashanah seemed to take care of itself for us. We've been invited for a pre-fast dinner and a break fast so that is all taken care of. (Never mind that I never remember to wean off the coffee and diet coke or that I can't seem to find a CLEAN white shirt anywhere.)

And just when we thought everything was taken care of...we got a lovely surprise yesterday by the early arrival of some relatives from Israel. They are staying in West Palm Beach which is about 100 miles north of us, so I had to find last minute Yom Kippur seats for them. Remember when LO went to Chabad on her own? Well her connections there helped me find seats for the family within a few e-mails and phone calls. Yay for LO and the Chabad! (And special thanks to the Rebbetzin at the Jupiter Chabad and the Rabbi at the West Palm Beach Chabad for their help!)

As our Rabbi always says, "It's all good."

G'mar Chatima Tovah - wishing you all a peaceful, easy and meaningful fast.

My Bat Mitzvah Lladro

PHD and I were walking through Macy's the other day and we saw that they were having an event where you could get your Lladro pieces signed by Rosa Lladro. We laughed as we both agreed that people that spent money on these things were meshugganah. And besides we both said, "They're kind of ugly". However, many years ago, PHD was in Spain and a friend of his asked him to buy a Lladro chuppah. (I have yet to find a picture of this on line.) PHD said it was lovely and he wanted to show it to me. We walked through the Lladro section and couldn't find it and so we looked through the catalog. We never did find it but instead we came across this. "Oh my gosh!" I marveled. "She has black hair and she looks Asian!" Can you guess what happened next?

(If you guessed that PHD bought the figurine for LO, you were right. We left the store shocked...did we just spend hundreds of dollars for a piece of porcelain for a bat mitzvah gift for LO who won't be a bat mitzvah for TWO YEARS?)