'Tis the season

It's officially my favorite time of year.

I am not afraid to admit it. I absolutely love the holiday season here in the US and let me tell you why.

People are in a good mood. They are looking forward to family traditions, to family reunions, to making memories together. People talk about food nonstop and put special effort into their meals. There are parties galore. The buildings are decorated and happy music is playing throughout. People are buying gifts for others, thinking about what would make other ppl happy. Movies come out that are all about families, dysfunctional or not (although it's the dysfunctional ones that are the funniest). Commercials on tv are about that special relative who comes home unexpectedly, or the wonderful first cup of coffee in the morning while checking if Santa ate his cookies, or the special spice that goes into that famous casserole.

Everything is festive, and cheery, and bright, and just beautiful. I love it. Not to mention that all the good songs were written by yidden...

Fingers - their real purpose

Me to 2 yr old daughter: Please take your finger out of your nose.

2 yr old daughter complies.

2 yr old daughter inserts a finger from the other hand into her nose.

Me: Please take that finger out of your nose too.

Daughter complies.

Daughter sticks a 3rd finger into the other nostril.

Me: That finger too.

And on. And on. There are ten fingers, two nostrils. You do the math.

Just say "thank you"

No matter how you feel about the wars going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, the fact remains that there are lots of people over there, away from home, family and friends, risking their lives every minute of every day. They are putting themselves on the line, and that is incredibly selfless.

To make it easy for you to say thank you to these people, Xerox is running a campaign where they will send postcards with your sentiments to troops overseas. It's free for you, but priceless to our soldiers. Click here and do your part.

Shabbat theme night: Fruit

I find theme nights for Shabbat dinner (or lunch) to be helpful because the theme helps to focus the menu and we haven't done theme night in a very long time so I wanted to bring back theme night to our house this week. I couldn't decide on a theme for this week and my husband suggested fruit so this was our menu:
purple cabbage salad (from Kosher by Design)
beet + apple salad
cranberry chicken
jeweled rice with dried fruit (from epicurious.com)
lime cilantro sweet potatoes (from epicurious.com)
sugar snap peas with a garlic dressing and mangoes (from Kosher by Design)
fruit for dessert, of course

It was a very colorful table with all of the colors of the food. Quite beautiful. And very very tasty!

Box Tops for Education

I am my daughter's school's Box Tops for Education co-chairwoman, and I am taking this job seriously. Box Tops are those itty bitty coupons that appear on certain (mostly) food products that schools send in for cold, hard cash. Each Box Top is worth ten cents. This money is then used for fun stuff like special programs and things and I want my school to reach its goal of $500 this academic year!

If you aren't already collecting Box Tops for another kid, I invite you to collect them and send them to me!!

If you register online and select our preschool (UOS Goldberg Montessori School in the 77096 zip code), we get 5 bonus Box Tops. Just go here.

To see a list of participating products, click here.

Last week I sent in our first submission and it was for $64. Not bad! Way to go UOS!

If you need my address, let me know.