And we’re back…

Or maybe I should have titled this one, "101 ways that things can go wrong on a Friday."

But before I get there—we are back! Everyone in our house misses Israel dearly (and we are all still trying to get over our jet-lag), but we have made it back to Texas. I can't wait to post updates to my series on Chatzos in the Holy land. G-d (and jet lag) willing, I will try to post about all of the fun chatzos-y things that I experienced.

In the meantime, we got home last Thursday evening—a mere 20 hours before Shabbos. I didn't think that the timing was going to be much of an issue. I had the whole 20 hours planned out to get us to Shabbos smoothly and effortlessly. I even envisioned a way that I would have all of the really-really Shabbos things (like food, table, ect) done before chatzos, while leaving the things that could wait (unpacking, laundry, ect) for the afternoon. It was really a genius plan. Of course, what happens when man plans??

In my brilliant plan for the day, my kids were going to sleep in. We woke up to leave Jerusalem at 3 am and no one really slept well on the plane. By the time we were back in Houston, it was over 24 hours from when they had awoken. I was going to use their sleep deficit in my favor—while they were trying to catch up on their zzz, I would start the laundry and pull our Shabbos food from the freezer (with the exception of salads and challah—which DH was nice enough to offer to pick up for me). I made sure to get to sleep as early as possible—10 ish-- so that I could really take advantage of the time that the kids were sleeping. When DS woke up at 11:45 (pm… that is right… a mere hour and 45 minutes AFTER I went to sleep), I figured he would go back to sleep. I gave up on that notion at about 3:30 am when DD also woke up.

Okay. Fine. No sleep. I have done a lot more on no sleep. As long as DH was able to get the things I needed from the store, we could still do this. No problem. That is about when we discovered his car battery was dead. DD decided that was also a good time to start vomiting. A lot. Like, Dr. Dad kept mentioning a trip to the ER.

And there we were. Three o'clock on a Friday afternoon. Four suitcases had exploded over the floor in the living room. Food was slowly defrosting (but still no challah). Whole family walking around like zombies. One car not starting. And an infant that was unable to hold down liquids.

Needless to say, we barely made it to Shabbos—let alone making it to chatzos. I should have known better about making a plan. There should always be some wiggle room in your plan—you never know you will need it.