Claire and Si's annual visit went by in a whirl. This time her sister-in-law and her hubby joined them here for a few days. It was lovely to see them after so long! It seems that we are always anticipating their visits and then suddenly they are here. And gone. And then it was birthday time. February is Shiraz's birthday and Effie's birthday, they are two days apart, so it's always a fun, busy week. This year Purim fell on the week of their birthdays so it was especially busy. Purim in Israel, at least in schools and kindergartens, is an extravagant, week long, party-like carnival. The week before the week before Purim the kids get a letter of instructions for the next week and together with the 'do not dress up as terrorists, do not bring weapons to school...etc. etc.' they receive daily missions...
Sunday is weird hat day, Monday is fairy tale day, Tuesday is ghost and monster day...you get it -right? Which puts me in a mad frenzy trying to prepare different props for each day as well as the special mishloach manot (food parcels) which they give out to their friends, and their fancy dress for the actual day. Oh, and did I mention that they are allowed to wear make-up all that week (not regular make up – they have their faces painted daily, which makes getting to school in the morning just a little more tricky than usual). Of course I forgot to take photos every day, but here are some of them.
This year Meshi's costume was really convenient, she just wanted to be a princess, so she wore a dress from last year. Ben was a cute puppy dog, he wore the same costume that the girls wore at his age and Shiraz wanted to dress up as Princess Leia, a decision she made the first time she saw Star Wars – that was easy enough, she wore a white shirt that she already had, my mom quickly sewed her a white skirt and I made her a belt with aluminum foil, adorned with some old computer parts. I put her long hair up in the Princess Leia hair-do and we were off to school. Of course we had to do it all again the next evening when we went to shul for the megila reading, but by then we were old-hat at it and it didn't take long at all.
Back to birthday week...Shirazi's birthday comes first and Effie's. She was woken up in the usual family birthday tradition...balloons, confetti gun, pressies...and that evening we had her birthday dinner. She chose sushi. Her birthday cake was meant to be a Mickey Mouse cake, but it stuck to the pan, so I quickly made another cake and while she was out at a friend's birthday party Ben and I decorated it. The kid may just be heading toward a sugar-art career like his aunt. For Effie's birthday I only made one cake (of the two traditional birthday cakes that he usually gets), a sign that we are getting old. It was the white chocolate cheese cake with dark chocolate topping – I forgot to take a picture of it. We went to a friend's birthday party that evening we celebrated his birthday the following Sunday with a family lunch (and yes, he had lots of meat).
Then after our relaxing lunch we hurried home to prepare the place for the invasion of eight little girls. Shirazi's first sleep-over party. All in all it was fun although of course there were the usual little girl problems which we had to solve. Not much sleep was had by anyone, but a good time was had by all. I have to admit that I felt like I didn't do much work at all for this party (and I loved that). I decorated the place, made a cake and bought some snacks and pizza, and that's it. We did nails, played games, ate pizza (and other junk food) and watched movies and the next morning Effie made them toast and and I just made hot dogs for the girls who stayed for lunch. I guess that's a sign of a successful party...when your guests stay until after lunch the next day.
