Potato kugel with love

Friday it typically a rushed and busy day around here.  We are busy getting the house pretty, the food cooked, everyone bathed, the table cleared off from their weekday projects and set with china and our best silverware, the lights on that need to be on, toilet paper ripped, the lights off that need to be off and often kids moved around from room to room and one of their rooms made up for guests.

But everyone pitches in and it does all get done B"H.

One of my daughters peels many heads of garlic for roasted garlic each week, another takes care of the table and sweeping the floor, a third peels all of the other vegetables I need to cook with.  They open cans, they polish silver, the list seems endless at times.

And in between other jobs they take turns grinding potatoes and make potato kugel for Friday lunch.

It is hot, it is yummy and it makes everyone smile and willing to work happily, together, getting their jobs done.  The kugel keeps the team fueled and working together.

The total sum of some potatoes, eggs, onions, salt, and oil is full bellies, big smiles and something to look forward to in the middle of a busy day.

Catching up after many months, a couple surgeries, a new medi-port, a great retreat, and new friends made

It really has been too long since I wrote!

It is funny, life is B"H really good.  I am happy.  I always prefer to smile over frowning and yet my blog was getting me down - so I put it away for a while.  There really is so much good going on in my life, so many wonderful people and so very very much that I am grateful for.

I wasn't doing well with the fact that my blog was becoming more and more about my challenges and difficulties.

True, my life is full of those too.  Chronic medical issues, acute medical issues, they can easily take over, but are they what is important about my life?  Certainly not.

B"H I have my family, my kids are growing up so nicely and so quickly!  I have a supportive community.  My car is chugging along taking us where we need to, and sometimes even where we want to, go.  We have the help we need around the house.  Hey, we have a house  B"H!  We finally, after 8 years of talking about it, managed to rewire the house and upgrade the electricity.  My tumor markers are low.  We discovered Ikea and finally have mirrors and bathroom cabinets.

I went on a rest and recover retreat with Beit Natan last week.  One of the workshops was about expressing ourselves through art.  We were given paper, plasticine clay and paints.  The clay was to be our body and the paint how our soul relates to our body.  It may be hard to tell from the picture of my picture, but this is what came out for me.  The pink is my body, doing what it wants, when it wants and how it wants.  It is interesting, but it does as it pleases.  There is a red heart there as well, red for life, but also for pain.  Above it all though, more important than any of the rest is my soul, my joy in life and my ability to live and love and serve HaShem despite the state of my body.  So much more important is it, that it is hard to see my body through the paint that represents my soul.

This is my front yard.  My husband planted the flowers for me, most of them almost a year ago!  Some hibernated over the winter, but they are back now and most are much much bigger.  The irises have been blooming, mostly one flower at a time, since December.

Every time I leave my house and every time I return I get to see this tangible show of his love and support for me.  When we got married my husband didn't know a trowel from a spoon, yet when I wasn't up for gardening but really wanted things growing, he stepped up and figured it out for me.