Thanksgiving weekend

I was off from work on Thursday thanks to the American holiday so we decided that we should do something with the kids. We planned on picking them up early and going to Zichron Yaakov to do something with some of my sister's (Ethel) family and some of Shira's brother's (Danny) family. Wednesday night we heard that Rabbi Raphael Marcus was niftar and they were bringing the body to Eretz Yisrael. He had been the rabbi of Shira's shul since she was little (Shira's brother blogged about his first memory of him) and his oldest son was my chavrusa in YU and I had gotten to know him after I got engaged. We both wanted to go to the funeral which was at 1 PM in Yerushalayim on Thursday so my father watched Yeshaya in Yerushalayim while we went to the funeral.

We got home just before the bigger kids came home from school so we waited for them and then went to pick up Leora from gan. By the time we got to Ethel's house in Zichron it was about 5:30 and there wasn't much time to do anything. Some of them went out to get the pizza and a movie (Shrek 3) and to pick up Danny's daughter Ayala while the rest of us just hung out at the house. The kids all watched the movie while the adults chatted.
Ethel's oldest two sons have been off from school for about six weeks because of the teacher's strike here. It's a little ridiculous but that's life. The 12 year old, Eylon, was sufficiently bored that he was interested in coming with us for Shabbos even though there really wasn't anyone his age and Maya had been planning on coming the entire time. We didn't have room for both of them so the two of them and Rivka took the train back to Modiin on Friday.

We hung out at Ethel's house on Friday morning and then drove back to empty the bag from that trip and repack for Shabbos. We picked up the kids from the train and drove to Yerushalayim for Shabbos. We were having another mini-reunion at the Inbal hotel. My sister Amy and my cousins Marlene Brody and Stuart Katz were there with their families. We had a nice time with my grandmother and ate plenty of food. Four of us went to the kotel this morning for Shacharis and Shira went to the kotel for mincha with a bunch of the girls. Too bad that neither of us went with Stuart on Friday night because Jerry Seinfeld was there.