Sukkah Raising Party '09

As with most things around our house, one person's project turns in to a family project very quickly.

My husband started to get tools and lumber out to put up the sukkah today and everyone got in to the act.

A few innocent bystanders.

Me, pretending to help. Before this I was sitting on the bench in the sunshine with the camera taking pictures of free range chickens and free range children.

The littlest worker.

My husband had sent me to the store to buy bales of straw for the sukkah and while I was gone he got the structure up with the help of all of the children. They are really becoming a good work crew!

Sukkot, or the feast of booths, will be going on this year from October 2nd through the 9th. Consider building a sukkah with your family this year and following the Word:

Leviticus 23:39-43
39"On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. 40And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days. 41 You shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, 43that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God."

Nehemiah 8:14-18
14And they found it written in the Law that the LORD had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, 15and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, "Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as it is written." 16So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof, and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the Water Gate and in the square at the Gate of Ephraim. 17And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths, for from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. 18And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the Book of the Law of God. They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the rule.