So I’ll cut right to the chase.  Our Shabbat was all about the water.  Friday night it rained all night.  I slept well despite the pounding rain and hail on the roof (it seems to hail here every time there is a heavy rain, I am not sure why) and the thunder but Eric had a hard time sleeping.  Ben ran upstairs at 7am to wake Eric up to let him know that there was a flood downstairs.  First thoughts were that of course it was because of the rain and the leak in the living room ceiling which has been getting progressively worse with all this rain in the last 3 days.  Ben said it was coming from the kitchen, though.  Eric ran downstairs and saw that it was pouring out from underneath the meat sink.  The next hour and a half was spent sponga-ing the water out of the front and back doors.  It was nuts.  Unfortunately, our big rug was fully saturated with water and all the red bled onto the cream and it is now a pink and red rug. 

We decided that the best way to attack the problem of the rug would be to roll it up and hang it outside.  The only place that we could think of is the outside upstairs mirpeset.  I couldn’t lift the darn thing b/c it was so heavy.  We left it on the stairs for a while and let the water pour out of it.  The water coming out of it was pink!!  It looked like we killed someone and wrapped their body in it and were dragging it up the stairs.   We finally managed to lug the thing up the stairs with no injuries, although Eric did almost fall down the stairs once, and we hung it outside and I plan on calling a carpet cleaner to see what we can do about it.  I am hoping to salvage it somehow.

The rest of Shabbat went by pretty quickly.  Eric took a nap with Ben in our bed in the afternoon and Talia went out to play.  I read on the couch.  Suddenly Shabbat was over and I got the kids dressed in their costumes and sent them with Eric to shul. I kept Keren home with me and put her to sleep soon after they left.  I went to a later women’s only megillah reading at 8:15.

Today was another wet day.  A ton of rain and hail, thunder and lightening again.  I took Talia to the women’s megillah reading after Eric came home from his reading.  We spent the day delivering shalach manot and hanging around.  In the late afternoon we went to my cousin Avi’s wife’s parents’ house for Seudah in Petach Tikvah.  When we left here it was sunny and when we got close to their apt. it was hailing so hard that we couldn’t see 2 feet in front of us.  It was insane driving in that. 

Anyway, we had a nice time but it was very crowded there and there wasn’t enough room for everyone at the table.  People were kind of standing around and rotating.  I felt bad b/c we would have had room here comfortably for everyone.  My grandfather was there and he was walking nicely with his walker.  His only problem now is it is very hard for him to get up out of his chair.

We got home around 8:30 and threw the kids into bed and started cleaning up the mess that is our house.  Eric organized all the candy and cookies, etc.  That’s become his job over the years and he’s good at it.  It took us over an hour to do it all.  I am hoping that tomorrow the kids sleep late and then go down and turn on the tv and let us sleep late!!  Tomorrow is Shushan Purim and the kids are off again…