As you can tell if you have been following me for any length of time, this year has produced a lot of "firsts". To add on to our list of first, we built a Sukkah this year for the first time. Since we are now living in an area that has a Jewish population separate from my family, we didn't know exactly what to expect with Sukkot.
On Wednesday night, we were invited to eat with some friends. On Yom Tovs, you can carry or push a stroller, so I pushed the girls and husband met us there when he was done praying. A noticeable difference between a Shabbat meal and a Sukkot meal is the quantity of guests. At Sukkot, there are only a handful of guests at each meal instead of a really large crowd. According to several of our hosts, this is because there are so many opportunities to host a meal in the sukkah that you can spread out the guests more. For Thursday lunch, we hosted a coworker of mine and her family. We did a very family friendly, okay kid friendly, meal and had a great time hanging out and schmoozing.
On Thursday afternoon, we participated in our first Sukkah hop. We visited four different sukkahs and ate snacks in each one. It was nice to see where people lived, what they served, and how they built their sukkah. Thursday night, we ate out again. This meal started even later because you can not prepare for one day while still celebrating the previous day. The night turned cooler and D had to borrow a sweater. Who would have thought that we would get Fall weather in Texas?!?!?!
For Friday lunch, we ate at someone's home once again. The small guest list made all of the meals more intimate and easier to converse. After leaving lunch, we rushed home to prepare for guests in our sukkah. We were going to be stop number two on Friday's sukkah hop. After setting up, we went to the first sukkah. D was so excited to tell everyone who would listen that they would be going to her sukkah next. She was quite the hostess!!! She showed everyone the food and the cooler full of drinks. Then, we headed out to the final two sukkahs on the hop.
After we lit candles on Friday night, D asked me whose house we were eating at. I told her that we weren't going anywhere for Shabbat dinner and were staying home to eat as a family. She was so disappointed!!! I fed them early and put them straight to bed. They were exhausted from their day of activities. They slept for almost 14 hours!!!!! We did all of our Shabbat meals at home, to get our kids back onto a schedule and routine. It was also nice not to have to rush somewhere.
On Monday, everyone went back to work and school. We were blessed that a coworker invited us to dinner at her sukkah. The dinner was perfect for our girls with hot dogs and hamburgers. The storms rolled in and we rolled out and headed home. It was a late night full of storms, but our sukkah survived!! We know of several sukkahs that fell or collapsed. Now, we are getting ready for Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. The marathon of holidays is coming to a close.
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