Lag BaBuchman

I know this post is a little overdue, but what can I say, I'm a busy lady...
In one of my recent posts I described how the kids prepare for Lag BaOmer. I forgot to mention how the kids transport all their wood. Think about it, they don't drive yet! So instaed, they take the shopping carts from the supermarkets, and they put all the gathered wood in there. Ayelet's ganenet was telling me that the country loses a lot of money from this holiday because of all the "stolen" wood and shopping wagons. I asked, "Don't they return the wagons?" She said "No, they get thrown into the fires!" Theres only one word for that: pyromaniacs! Anyway, now that the chag is over, I can actually say- that if only we all prepared that intensely for Mashiach, and got as excited about it as these kids are for Lag BaOmer, he'd be here in a second. The investement of effort devoted to Lag BaOmer is realy unparalleled. And I finally got to see what comes of all of it: Bonfires. Humongous, 20 ft. bonfires!
We had plans to go to our shul medura (bonfire). Before we set out we closed all our trisim completely- as we had been warned, so that the smoke doesnt penetrate and stink up the apt. We set out and arrived at the medura site. This is how you can tell that our shul is all American: we get to the site, and everyone is just standing around. Some people start spreading out their blankets, start feeding their kids snacks etc. But there is no wood in sight! Here I am mocking the 2 week search for wood, but now I can say understand why its necessary. So finally, one mom starts taking kids with her to go scavenging for wood. Thank Gd the neighboring Israeli bonfires had pity on us and gave us some of their stash! There was about 10 other bonfires going on around us, in this big open space. Seeing what some of these people planned on putting in their bonfires what just incredulous- broken furniture, wooden cabinet doors, mattresses, and of course the shopping carts too! The fires lasted all night, but we got out of there relatively early. It was a great night, and I can certainly consider it a true chavayah!