Purim and Hamentashen

This one's for you, Auntie Laura! We know how you love your hamentashen. :)

So although we are not Jewish, our whole family has a love of so much having to do with Jewish culture, and so we begged a few friends of ours in town to let us celebrate Purim with them. But, because we're Catholic, we had to atone first for straying, so we had the girls wash the kitchen floor with toothbrushes before we left for our celebration.

Joking! The girls obviously did wash the floor with toothbrushes, but that was their own choice of a fun activity this morning. Side note - before going to celebrate Purim Christina asked the girls how they wanted their hair done today. Elena chose mouse ears (you'll see this look better in some later pictures) and Clara chose Nutcracker. That girl keeps us on our toes. Christina went with many braids, to simulate Clara in the Nutcracker's look - because really, how do you make a girl look like a Nutcracker with only a hairstyle to work with???

Okay - so off we went to the party. Sylvie (1 year old friend and daughter of our Purim-celebrating friends) gave the girls each a headband as they walked in the door. Elena felt this was a festive look:

The girls tried to concentrate on rolling out the dough for hamentashen cookies into a big circle.

Sylvie kept rolling her fingers underneath and into the dough - every time. A bit sad, but also really funny!

Elena tried to be patient while it wasn't her turn, but it's clear that was a tall order:

Some dough-tasting had to be done, as a reward for all that patience!

Then came the cutting of the dough into circles:

And then the filling was brought out - it was dried plums and nuts, and the girls could not stop eating dried plums by the handful!

Clara turned out to be a hamentashen making genius. She was really good at getting the filling in, and she filled and folded these cookies long after the other girls had moved on.

Elena mostly liked tasting the filling!

Folding the dough into triangle turned out to be a bit tricky - even for the Christina and Steve. These were some pretty funny-looking hamentashen.

While the cookies were baking, we did some aspect of the traditional dressing-up for Purim by doing face paints. Sylvie REALLY got into the paints!

Elena went with an all-pink motif:

Christina painted a cat face on Clara, and then Clara sweetly painted Christina - "I hold you throat, you no move." Felt sweeter than it sounds, evidently!

Then we took turns saying "Haman!" (the name of the "bad guy" of the Purim tale) which was the cue for everyone to make lots of noise to drown out the sound of his name!

It was a bit loud for Elena, but Clara and Sylvie loved it.

Then, time to try the fruits of our labors. Those hamentashen were delicious!

Clara and Sylvie would have no part of it, but Elena decided to take our friend Jessica's suggestion that they dress up like Esther, the "hero" of Purim. She quite liked it!

Our best shot of all three girls together.

Jessica, Matt, and Sylvie - thanks for letting us crash Purim and for teaching us how to make hamentashen! We had a wonderful time.