A Very Belated Succos Post

I've always loved fall but fall in Israel is very special.  There are no colorful leaves with few exceptions and the weather until the rains come is often indistinguishable from summer but the holiday season mood prevails and that is what makes it different from the other falls in other parts of the world.  I love how the genral mood changes from Yom Kippur solemness and seriousness to Succos joy.   I love  the post -Yom Kippur bang- banging noise of people putting up their sukkahs and the post- Succos bang bang crash noises of putting them away.  So this year's Succos was very nice.  We did get to do some Succos crafting with the kids, although not as much as  I had originally  hoped for but the pompom garland and the chain out of different patterned wrapping papers came out very nice and the kids did a great job decorating the sukkah with decorations new and old (  hopefully I'll post some pictures once I overcome my various computer issues, sigh).  The weather was beautiful.  We really stayed close to home this Chol Hamoed but the kids did get to do some local things and for most part we just stayed home, enjoyed the down time, dealt with chaos if it developed and enjoyed the holiday.  The menu was pretty simple with pot roast, chicken roast, moroccan style chicken stirfry with lemons from our yard, unstuffed cabbage, salads, cake, parve ice cream and such and that worked out just fine.  Everyone enjoyed shaking the arba minim, esrogim (citrons) smelled divine and made me think how someday when we have a place of our own, how nice it would be to have an esrog tree in our yard as well as an arava (willow) tree and some hadassim(myrtles), some day.  The kids enjoyed the Simchas Torah  excitement, I think something has to be done about the overwhelming amount of candy and other sweets that they consumed in schul for the future but in the end it was nice.  The kids helped take down the Sukkah just as they helped put it up and that was that for this holiday .  Somewhere in between all this we brought up the winter clothes, distributed sleeping bags and winter blankets as the weather slowly began to change towards a colder one.  I think the children got a well needed break from everything over the last month and are now ready to dive in, into the rest of the year and settle down to a routine.  I've been aslo trying to organized us for the coming months of life and learning.  I've been meaning to write sooner but with everything going on it was hard to find the time and energy.  The Shalit deal, has also cast it's difficult shadow over many people's Succos this year.  Of course, we were all very happy to have Gilad Shalit back from Hamas captivity after over 5 years but the hefty ransom that the Israeli government decided to pay left lots of people upset, hurt and apprehensive. There were many reasons why the deal was struck at this junction and lots has been written on the subject both for and against only time will tell how the implications will play out, may G-d protect us all much like the sukkah is meant to remind us that true protection comes from Above even if we are in a rather makeshift shelter, which is not much of a shelter at all.  So this has been weighing heavily on my mind and so this post is very very late.