We’re wrapping up the third month of our Everyday is a Holiday campaign. It really is incredible how many holidays there are and how many opportunities there are to celebrate.
Here’s a recap of this past week:
What happened in our country on March 24 with the March for Our Lives was a significant day in history and although we didn’t attend our local march, I watched some of the march in Washington, D.C. live and was so in awe of all the work the Parkland teens have done this past month. I explained to the boys what was happening and noted that this will likely be a day that will be discussed in their children’s history classrooms, just as today’s students learn about the civil rights movement and other significant movements in history.
Moving on to the mundane – waffle pizza for March 25 National Waffle Day (we actually celebrated it the evening before since we had a movie night). Ron put his Belgian waffle maker to work and made waffle pizza as we introduced the kids to the movie “Ghostbusters.” They kids enjoyed the movie a lot, especially the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and have been singing, “Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters!” all week.
On March 25, we attended a fun event at the Dreamy Draw recreation center that is near our house. Friends of ours hosted the third annual Exodus in the Desert – a potluck dinner and hike at a local mountain range in advance of Passover. The host dressed up as Moses and some of the participants dressed up as Israelites. As somebody mentioned, we are fortunate that we live in a place where the beautiful weather allows us to go on a hike in March. After the hike, there was also a drum circle and the evening ended with the kids playing ball on the basketball court. There were several families that I had met when our kids were in preschool together so it was really nice to catch up with them and see how all our kids have grown.
March 26 was Make Your Own Holiday Day and since there were many rounds of the state capital game with Alexa, we’ll call it National State Capital Day. J and Z ask Alexa to play the State Capital game and Alexa asks them what the capitals are of all the different states and after a few days of this, they’ve gotten really good at it. When they get all five right, J and Z cheer and give each other high-fives, it’s super cute.
March 27 was World Theatre Day so we asked Alexa to play us some Broadway tunes during dinner. My favorite Broadway soundtracks from childhood were “Annie,” “Grease” and “Fiddler on the Roof” so I requested songs from those and Ron asked for a song from “The Pirates of Penzance” and J asked for “I’m Just a Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock. A asked for “Ghostbusters.” I’m not sure if that ever made it to the theater, but we listened to it anyway.
Coincidentally, a parent in Z’s class brought in some bunny and chick cake pops to his class on March 28, so he celebrated National Something on a Stick Day at school. Then the synagogue had a chocolate seder that evening so A had a marshmallow on a stick dipped in chocolate. At home, we had a salad bar for dinner so to keep with the theme, I stuck some toothpicks in pieces of cheese. J decided to also eat his garbanzo beans with a toothpick to mark the holiday.
Preparing for Passover
This week is National Cleaning Week and as we are in preparing for Passover mode, we’ve been observing that a lot this week (at least I have, although A did vacuum underneath the couch cushions.) Last night we also did our search for chametz, where you hide 10 pieces of chametz (we used crackers) around the house then search for them.
In the past, I would hide them then we turned off all the lights in the house and walked through the house with a flashlight and I’d shine the light into the areas where I hid them until one of the kids would shout, “I found one!’ Then one of the kids sweep the chametz with a feather into a wooden spoon and drop it into a paper bag. Why a wooden spoon and a feather? According to chabad.org, you use the wooden spoon because then you can burn it with your chametz the next day and the feather is simply for a practical purpose of being able to push the piece of chametz into the spoon.
In past years, there were tears when someone found more pieces than others so this year the youngest one helped me hide them (although he then wanted to find them, too). They took a little longer to find since somebody else wanted to hold the flashlight, but eventually I turned on my phone’s flashlight and shined the light into the general vicinity and gave little hints, too. I’m happy to report that there were no tears this year!
(In case you’re wondering why we would search around our house in the dark for pieces of crackers, Chabad offers an explanation of this what chametz is here and more information about the search here.)
Since Passover begins tonight, there will be some holidays in the upcoming that we will definitely not be celebrating, such as National Sourdough Bread Day on April 1 or National Deep Dish Pizza Day on April 5. But I’m certain we’ll still find something to celebrate in addition to Passover!
A Medley of Moments 