Its a Small World and More!

First off, so much for the weekly blog. Life is hectic and seems determined to remain so despite my crystal ball telling me otherwise. Last month I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel, turns out it was train coming down the track to try and run me over. But we are persevering with a little fortitude and a lot of help for a week and a half when Grammy and Grandpa came. Grammy and Grandpa belong to my husband, but I probably look forward to their visits more than he does. For nearly two weeks I get help taking kids to and from school, getting them ready, get lunches together, laundry done and so on and the kids get one on one time with the grands. It is like the extra set of hands I was supposed to get when I had twins. Plus the kids think they can get away with anything and the grands think the kids can do no wrong, so it is a winning combination.

In other news I have since turned another year older, ugghhhh, I want to be forever 25. I have an indisputable theory that 25 is the perfect age. At 25 you are an adult in every way. Bars are legal, cars can be rented with out additional insurance and nothing is off limits. Plus you get the benefit of being young enough to not have real responsibility and if you are not settled it is OK because you are still young! I have explained this theory to many and some even agree with my logic, the others, well what can I do? Guess they like being over 25.

Work continues to go well. While I am seriously grateful, I continue to be amazed by it. Getting hours out can be like pulling teeth. Between, writers block, kid appts and kids in general and a husband who seem to think they actually need to be taken care of, go figure, it is all quite challenging. However, for some strange reason the people I work with continue to like me and my writing. I am learning to let go of the nit picky points a little which is helping a lot.

The kids are doing great in school, and turns out our big one is the bell of the ball at school. We have had teachers meetings with 2 out of 3 kids and so far so good. Our big one is in a "special education" program. Meaning he just can't keep up with the rest of the kids because he has English speaking parents who are terrible at helping with homework. So he is in a program with a total of 12 boys and he has 5 different teachers. One for each subject. I like that he gets the one on one, which he responds well too, but we are trying to work the math at home as that would be the one subject that he is just really way more advanced on. But I am not pushing that issue at school. When he is ready they will integrate that part of his day into the regular class. All his teachers say the same thing, "Our kid is great, he is such a calm boy and so good!" Of course I am thrilled, which leads to the next question, "Why doesn't he do that at home?" Of course mostly he is a good kid, but we have our moments. Most of the teachers are Israeli but we have one that can speak fairly decent English and one teacher that is English, meaning British. I am surprised that S has not picked up his British accent again. He had one for a long time that would sneak out after living in Jerusalem where almost all our friends were British. And yeah for me, because now I can get by with more crappy Hebrew! Our middle angel gets help once a week from an outside tutor in reading and Hebrew, while the reading seems to be going really well, the Hebrew is questionable. My next step is to speak with the tutor and get a full report. M we are in the middle of switching schools. We are working to get her into a "special ed." program as well. She understands Hebrew great but won't talk. So we want to get her talking in school and we think have a class size that is under 33 girls will help a lot. Plus she has some speech patterns in both languages that need correcting. Same thing goes here, as she improves, we can move her back into a regular class, either this year or next. The truth is, every child should go through school with small class sizes. It is a shame that only the "problem" children have such a great opportunity. But moving on....

Our heat wave has finally broken after three very long months. We are down to the 70's during the day and we are all wondering if we need sweaters or not! I went to a lecture tonight on kids and education, and actually took a sweater with me and it actually got chilly! It is at least 68. Brrrrr........... :) Yeah, I know you NW people want to kick my.... for saying 68 is chilly, but hey, there's where you are; and there is here! However, we did get rain on Shabbat and the truth is, if we don't get more, I worry we are going to be completely out of water. 7 months of no rain is a little disturbing and comes too close to a story I read in 6th grade.....

And finally speaking of this lecture I went to...I now embark upon the topic of its a small world. I met someone from Seattle. Now to meet ONE person who actually knows WHERE Oregon is, is pretty amazing. Finding someone from the West Coast is astounding, but someone who is from the PNW is down right earth shattering! But this is where it gets really bizarre. We had a family move in earlier this year, also from Seattle, we knew about this. We did not know them personally, but knew the name and we have mutual friends. Turns out our Seattle friends also knew someone else from Seattle who lives here, not so far from us. AND the kicker is... this new person I met tonight knows all the people we know from Seattle. OK the Seattle and PDX Jewsih Communities combined are not that big, but to have 4 PNW families living in Beitar Illit, Israel all random and unplanned...just reminds me of how small our world really is. Plus there is a rumor that another family lives here that spent a couple of years in Portland and just moved back here. I am reminded that nothing is random and hey, it is just nice to have people from home. And not have every last person be from NEW YORK! Not that have a problem with that, but they don't all know where Oregon is........ Oh and for those of you who want to know all the Seattle names, I bet some of them you could guess, because you might be related and you would probably be able to guess the other names, but if you can't guess them all, you will just have to e-mail! :)

As it is after midnight here, that wraps up my weekly, daily and maybe yearly update depending on how things go. And besides now you can read this in 2 parts, since it is so long! TTFN!