We arrived in Charlottesville – actually Covesville, VA – after three nights on the road from Asheville.  We spent two nights in Boone, at the KOA – still haven’t found a really nice place to stay there.  We made a stop at AmRhein Winery (Harvest Host) just into Virginia and not too far off the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We had a bit of a hurry up wine tasting because our arrival was delayed by a motorcycle accident on the Parkway – our second that day.  We met Russ, the owner, on the way in, he commented on how well Carol had handled the coach coming through their very narrow gate.  We set up on a fairly out of level piece of ground.  When Carol put down the levelers they continued right into the ground, oops.  We bought 6 bottles of wine.

We had a beautiful and relatively uneventful drive the rest of the way to Malena and Dan’s. Setting up in the driveway we decided to have Carol at the wheel and me giving ground guidance as opposed to the usual order of things.  It worked out very well and we may make that a normal approach for tight circumstances.

Since arrival we have been very busy helping prepare for Alexander’s Bar Mitzvah.  There is much yard work to be done

  swarming from one of the hives.  The next day they returned to the hive they had left while Malena was there to watch.

Much of my time has been spent with Alexander as my assignment has been to help him prepare his drosh (speech based on the Torah portion he will be reading).  The most difficult part for me is to get him to write it in his words so when he presents it it sounds like him not me.  Of course, I have a lot of help from his parents so we are doing most of our work on the motorhome out of earshot.  They have plenty to do without taking on this added work. It has certainly been fun for me as I have not had an opportunity to spend serious intellectual time with Alex before this and we are getting to know each other even better.

Every time I look at the “to do” list that Malena keeps on a spreadsheet it seems to get longer.  Mixed in with the preparations are baseball games, rehearsals for a play and the usual demands of life.

Two days later:

The list does not appear to be any shorter, but a lot has been done.  It seems my role has been “helper” in the yard.  I have helped move the chickens out of the way and helped build an animal pen in the woods to move some four legged critters out of the way and helped put together a new grill and helped myself to the occasional beer and glass of wine.

The drosh is written and has been rehearsed.  I have been learning my Torah reading and Carol has been busy assembling the siddurim (prayer books) which needed amendments for this service, they are in three ring binders.  As soon as I post this I will get to working on that task, unless I am “assigned” some other job that is deemed of higher priority.  Carol continues to prepare meals while everyone else is off on errands and running her own errands as well. Family starts arriving tonight and continues to arrive until late Friday night.