November & December

 

Dear All. 

Two months have gone by since my last post. I kept thinking, I'll write a new blog when I've some news, something interesting to write about. But hey, two months have passed, we've now entered lockdown for the next 6 weeks with no end in sight. People are making dreadful prophesies that there will no be school before April and maybe not till September!! I don't think we're going to be having any adventures at all so we'll just sum up what was and be excited about... er.. the next walk around the block.

November 

Back when Hadas was 8 we couldn't think what to get her for a birthday present. So we promised her a hike, just us and her. She liked the idea, problem was, we were kinda busy, usually too busy to make supper never mind find a day for both of us to take off work, leave the other two kids for a day and go hiking. Fast forward two years, Hadas is in a different school from the other two, the stars aligned. We persuaded Daniel to leave his work for a few hours, jumped on our bikes and went off to celebrate Hadas's eighth birthday. It was a beautiful day, the cows and alpacas were delightful and we had a great time. 
 

Incidentally, we did the same hike last week (beginning of January) with all three kids. I did not get any pictures, but Batya summed it up in diary entry she wrote for her teacher. 

It reads: Happy Hanukka, we rode on our bikes to Granchester. It was very cold and ther wer no cows.


***

Honestly, that was November. We had a slight obsession about space and planets, a LOT of possible sightings of the International Space Station (ISS). Eating of some very odd looking vegetables provided by the gardener. Zaki moved down to year two at school which meant that slowly he became happier in that environment. 

December

December was mainly about enjoying Chanuka and giving balance to the Christmas fever. Having always gone to Orthodox Jewish schools I'd never experienced Christmas so closely. Never realised how much this is the one chance of irreligious Christian schools to give that festive feeling Jewish kids get at Purim, Pasech, Shavuot, Rosh Hashana, Sukkot and Chanuka.. (and presumably more religious Christian schools have with Easter, saints days and so on?)

So we had the whole month of December weeks of Christmas jumper wearing, decoration making, nativity playing, Christmas dinnering.. All without really mentioning invoking the Holy Trinity or making me worried that my kids were really celebrating anything very religious at all. 

However I still wanted to make sure that Chanuka and Judaism were the dominant themes for my children. 

So.. I tried. 

Before Chanuka we bought clay and designed our own Chanukiot.

 

During Chanuka I did my best to give the children specially festive meals for their school lunches - vying with the Christmas dinner when they had plain sandwiches, 

 Hadas made doughnuts or latkes (לביבות) almost every night.

Quite a few of our Israeli neighbours joined us outside for chanukia lighting on several evenings. 

On Shabbat we went for a 'chanukia crawl' - walking round Cambridge looking for other people's chanukiot (this is different from in Shuva... we found two in a twenty minute walk..) 

 

Hadas & I helped Chabad Cambridge organise a treasure hunt for one night of Chanuka, which turned out to be a lot of fun. 

A Cambridge family who are shielding sent us our first chanuka mishloach manot.

 

And Su and my Ima made sure we were well supplied with paper games, stickers and chanuka gelt 💜.

****

One magical morning we woke up to snow.

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Winter holidays 

Winter holidays in shut down - where the shops, libraries and museums are shut and there's nowhere to go but you're still allowed out. 
We did our best to find treasure trails leading us all over Cambridge. The fact that the weather was sub zero most days meant that it really wasn't fun to be out and often Zaki and Daniel went to do something more energetic like running and then heading home to get warm. 





One of the trails was finding these tiny little doorways scattered around Cambridge.





Knitted artwork hung in Cambridge for everyone to enjoy. 


















Watching a boat come through a canal lock, the girls even helped open the gates. 




Lincoln Meadows.



The girls trying out a second world war bunker (ממ"ד) for size. 










***** 

Warm evenings in, we've joined the ranks and become a puzzling family. 









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That's it for now. We're now in proper lockdown until at least mid February, school is online, no shops etc, only supposed to go out once a day for exercise... Vaccines are slowly rolling out, certainly nothing like the amazing show that Israel is doing. 
Tomorrow night is Rosh Chodesh Shvat and I'm beginning to wonder how to celebrate ט"ו בשבת here. Feels strange planting trees not in Israel.. and it's so cold to start gardening here. Ideas anyone?