The last 24 hours have been more than awesome. One of the hardest things about having a large family is finding babysitters. Preferrably babysitters who agree to sit at our home. We are anal about that. We prefer our kids ruining our own house rather than someone else's. My wonderful sister Serach and her fiancé Étienne offered to babysit yesterday, so Kevin and I could have the evening to ourselves. We went to dinner at Hungarian Blintzes, where I had mushroom goulash (gombapaprikás palacsinta) and sweet cheese and raisins (túrós palacsinta) blintzes. They were great!
We headed over to Zappa around the time the doors opened, and waited for the concert to begin. I was pretty anxious whether the broadcast was working fine for my friends elsewhere, but evidenced by this post by some friends in Hungary (please do click, thanks) it worked just fine. Kevin, who is not even a Harel Skaat fan, and I both had an awesome time at the concert. Seriously, we sang along, we danced some, and did some public display of affection, and... well, we just had a blast. So much that Kevin is kinda sad he can't come with me on Saturday to the concert in Jerusalem! Now that's a big thing, after just suffering through two three shows within a month (he went with Bella earlier this month, then we had the trip together, and now this one). After the show we didn't go home, but crashed at a nearby hotel, where we had a 2 a.m. snack with room service, then woke up around 10, and after checking out we had a nice lunch. Then Kevin went to work, and I went to visit my brother Chalin. He is the one who was recently diagnosed with leukemia (AML) and he is going through the second extended hospitalization. I try to visit him every two or three days, or daily, if I can, as his wife is pretty busy taking care of their children, especially their one daughter who just recently received a stem cell transplant for ALL. (You know, those "awesome" Ashekenazi genes...) We talked about work a bit (Chalin is my immediate boss) and his kids (two of his sons are staying with us during the week) and about food.
Getting home thekids and Kevin were all at home, and I took some Indian food home for everyone. Taking a break from fixing our basement, we sat around in what will be a family area. The floor was put in last week, and all three small bedrooms are walled with the door frames all in place. Before dinner Kevin, Craig, Patrik and I finished sandpapering one of them, and my nephew will paint them and put the doors in tomorrow/Friday. It's all looking so nice. So sitting on the floor on throw pillows, eating kosher Indian food surrounded by my noisy family and way too much sandpaper, after such a perfect night, was perfect bliss.
