Monday, June 29, 2009

Welcome Toothfairy (Bienvenido Raton)

 

 
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Last Saturday Batya lost her first tooth. We were all so excited. I felt very excited to act as the Raton (the mouse – apparently Mexican folklore does not include fairies) take her tooth at night in return for some shekels (I was lucky VAT did not increased yet I saved myself 1%).

Also this week at Gan they celebrated early (or may I say very early) her 6th birthday. Given that her birthday is always the second day of school she did not celebrated her 5th birthday at Gan. Enjoy the slideshow

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

I'm in love!

Yes! I'm in love!
9 Years of love?
How about 18 years + of love?
Some say the magic started about 20 years ago in Israel. Well the magic is still alive and back in Israel.
Feliz Aniversario mi vidita. Te amo.


From Collages

Click on the picture to see it larger.

Monday, June 22, 2009

My girl is going to 1st grade

I’m so proud of Batya. Last week it was her graduation from kindergarten and now she is up to 1st grade.
I was so proud as I watched her do her dances, singing, etc. Can you believe she started the school year with just a couple of words in Hebrew and now she can understand and speak most of it?
The theme for the graduation party was math. We were so happy with her Gan as well as her Ganenet (teacher), this year they won a national award for best public religious gan, they had visitors from different schools and offices to learn from her gan. And we happened to fall there.
Enjoy the pictures and videos. I understand if you fly through the videos, for a parent or grandparent it looks like a real Broadway production.













Friday, June 19, 2009

A Sweet Guest

We are so happy to host my niece Liora. She is so sweet and the kids love her too.
Although we’ve had a rough week in terms of doctor visits for the kids and for us (yep, several visits in just a week or two, but thank G’d nothing serious), we have been able to go out a little. Below are some pictures of us with my niece Liora (Lioris, as we call her not to confuse her with the other sweet Liora). Below some pictures including our visit to Mearat Hanetifim with stalactites and stalagmites, a natural wonder. Enjoy.



I want to thank R. for letting me know that she is one of my blog followers and for giving me some strengths to write this post although it’s already 12:40am.
I’m hoping to be able to post very soon pictures and videos of Batya’s graduation party that took place today. We are so proud of her.
Ariela, I’m setting the regressive clock for your visit…See you soon here (Please just confirm the right date). Jaco, Judy, thanks for the opportunity to host them.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

New Sabra Album photo and other photos

Sabra Album
Below is a photo for the Sabra Album. Continuing to post pictures that talk about how Israel is such a special and interesting place. These pictures are so unique to Israel that I’m calling them “Sabra Album” (Click here for definition of Sabra). (You can also visit Sabra Album Take 1 , Take 2 , Take 3, Take 4, and Machane Yehuda Edition if you missed them).

Look at what the merry go round “gate keeper” at a local ambulatory amusement park is carrying on his waist!


From Sabra Album


Some titles for the picture above:

- Talk about a secure amusement park…
- Sir, I’m sorry but you are overqualified for this job and no you will not have to bring your gun to work.
- Kid! Get back on that horse NOW!
- No jumping the line, or else…
- Excuse me kid I will need to frisk your cotton candy
Any other ideas?


I wanted to share some miscellaneous photos from a visit to family, a BBQ with some friends and the visit of our friend Efrat who we were so happy to see, a visit to the beach in Rishon Letzion that we discovered we are only 30 minutes away “Door to Sand”. Enjoy.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Camels and hummus and planes, oh my!

The last week of May we visited the South for the day to attend our cousin’s graduation ceremony (see two postings below), we took all a day off and left early to visit the Israeli Air force museum.
On our way south I was amazed at how big and undeveloped the south is, yes we are a small country but there is definitely room for many more in our little country. There are very few roads that travel all the way south, unfortunately, even though they are mostly very good roads (especially road 6) as far a we got to, but an accident that closed the road for close to an hour had us in the car for a while.
We got to the museum and the kids were as excited as I was to see all the planes, however, I saw something different, I felt proud of what the people were able to form from basically nothing. The IAF (Israeli Air force) was never officially inaugurated, it was just transformed from being an unofficial defense force before the independence using transformed civilian planes that were donated or from obsolete equipment. It was that same IAF that defended Israel in all of its wars allowing the continuance of the Jewish state and avoided other huge world issues, such as what they did a day like today (June 7) in 1981 when in Operation Opera the IAF destroyed the Iraqi Nuclear reactor, we can all be thankful for that too. Among the pilots that took part in the attack was the late Colonel Ilan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut that was part of the fatal Columbia mission, he ones again made us all proud wearing the star of David on his flag patch up in space as well as bringing his kosher food.
The drive through the desert was beautiful, going through a lot of Bedouin villages, kind of the way our patriarch Abraham lived except for the aluminum walls, hot water, electricity and cable dish. Some camels on the dessert made it interesting for the kids to keep their eyes open and for me to avoid any of them on the road.
We stopped by Beer Sheva just like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Prophet Elijah, and many more, however they probably did not have the restaurant we went to back in their days, we all enjoyed an excellent lunch the Israeli way: Many salads, hummus & sauces with Pita to start and once you are almost full it’s time for the meat to come with a some rice and French fries (Chips in Hebrew), it’s an entire experience and it felt like an Oasis in the middle of the desert, although I was actually surprised on how nice and big Beer Sheva is.
From there we went straight to the graduation ceremony by Ben Gurion’s grave, great view and emotive ceremony!
Enjoy the pictures from our trip below.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

The sound of War

It was a little bit scary to hear the “War sirens” today at 11am.
Today the entire country had a country wide war drill. Citizens had to go to shelters for 10 minutes after the sounding of the alarm.
It was not scary to actually hear the sirens because I (and the entire country) knew about the drill, it’s just scary to think that you actually need to have such thing.
Drivers were advised not to stop therefore I heard the sirens from my car while I was driving through Hod Hasharon. The kids and Liora did have to go into a shelter. Batya even asked us today where our shelter room was.
It’s funny but apparently some businesses even planned for it, we tried to get to a pharmacy early morning and it was closed with a message saying “closed until after the drill”.
It’s good to know that we are prepared and as safe as we can, however it would be better if we didn’t have to worry about that at all.
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