After Twelve Days....

 Please Gd, this is over. Yesterday, a cease fire with Iran was announced to start at seven in the morning. Starting at 5:13 a.m., we got five pre-warnings that missiles were on the way. B''H they skipped over our section of the country, but unfortunately, four people were killed in Be'er Sheva.....

Best armchair quarterback analysis I heard was that Trump announced the cease fire on his own. Worked for Israel because we've accomplished what was necessary there. Worked for Iran because they were looking for a face-saving way out. If the cease fire sticks, Trump gets to play hero and maybe even get that Nobel Peace Prize he seems to want. If not, he's got an excuse to further pound Iran. While I have no idea if any of that is true, it makes sense to me.

Penina and I went out for dinner to celebrate (poor Menashe had already gone back to Jerusalem. #IOweYouDinner!). This is what the mall looked like at 8 PM on Tuesday evening:

And the big "welcome" sign at the entrance was directions to the nearest safe room in the mall:

HomeFront Command lifted most restrictions right around when we went out.  Crazy hard to find a place that was open, as the previous guidelines had only allowed restaurants to be open for delivery or take out and every non-essential business was not allowed to be open (hence the empty mall since only the restaurants and SuperPharm were open). After trying our top four restaurants, we joined the crowds at the burger joint, which seemed to be the only place open for dine-in.

Came home fully prepared and excited to hopefully have a good night's sleep. At 1:30 I heard Percy barking. Tried to ignore him. Thought about how he'd perhaps gotten spoiled being taken upstairs in the middle of the last 12 nights (for warnings/azakot) and maybe he was now expecting to sleep in someone's bed? Finally decided I'd rather sleep than take a sleep-training stand and brought him up to my bed, where he stood on the edge of my bed and barked. Oh noooo. That must mean.....Yup, his doggie friend Theo, who lives on the next block and (literally) walks himself over for playdates a few times a week, was outside our door. Thankfully Theo's family was still awake and someone came to get him shortly after. And after that? A blissful night's sleep.....

I think this was the war we all thought we would have after October 7: brutal but short, as opposed to brutal-but-628-days-long. Praying that Hamas, seeing what happened to Iran (their main supplier of weapons, training, intelligence, etc etc) will free the remaining hostages.

Schools started up again today and no restrictions of movement/business openings. I have never been so happy to see traffic in the mercaz before!! With tremendous thanks to Hashem, I am making dinner for a number of miluim families tonight, who still have the stress and challenge of their husband/father being out at war. 

Still no update on when my dear husband will be coming home. Our-friend-the-doctor is still stuck in the US, so it's not looking so great for either of them to come back before Shabbos. 

Next up: cleaning up the mamad which got WAY too much use over the past 12 days. Thank you, Hashem, for protecting us. May we never need to use it as anything but a guest room again!

(I feel like I could make a fun (for lack of a better word) "find the" game: Can you find Tums? Rescue Remedy? Sefer Tehilim? The "Go Bag" with medicines, our lock box with cash and all our important papers? Shoes for the three of us because if the house gets destroyed and you need to leave the mamad, you need to be able to walk through the wreckage? Dog food and leash? Snacks and more snacks? Flashlights and battery-operated lights in case the power went out? Satellite phone? Oy. Never mind. I'm getting stressed even thinking about what's in there!)