Mini Israel

This morning after I dropped off the boys, I came home to wait for the guy to come install the washer/dryer. While I was waiting, Shmuel (the father of the owner of our apartment who is managing it because the actual owner lives in Poland) came over with the electrician to put in the electrical line for the air conditioning which is still supposedly being installed tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly why this is such a big ordeal, but there are now about 5 big holes in the ceiling in the living room and even more than that in the wall in the dining room. Shmuel promised me that he'll fix them--I don't actually care because it's not my house, but I was pleasantly surprised to find that they actually cleaned up the huge mess of dust that they made. The guy did show up to install the washing machine, but he informed me that he wasn't allowed to do the dryer too. I called the guy who sold them to me and he said he's really sorry he forgot about the dryer because they don't sell many of them in the summer. He's going to call someone else to come install it and hopefully they will come tomorrow. In the meantime, I feel very Israeli because I did laundry and hung it out to dry. That may save energy, but it's the biggest pain and I think all my clothes are now going to have lines down the middle from the clothesline. We'll see how it turns out!
When I picked up the kids, we went straight to the mall to have lunch and try to buy a refill card for David's phone. We went on a wild goose chase looking for the Pelephone store--for some reason, the mall is very confusing and not all of the elevators go to the same places even when they look like they should. We rode in a lot of elevators and made a lot of wrong turns and Simon kept saying "this doesn't look like the Pelephone store" We finally found it but the line was way too long, so after all that, we left and went to Sbarro for pizza. The mall has lots of those ride-on toys that you put money in and they move so every time we passed one Simon wanted to stop and go on it. There was a train that he really wanted to go on, but someone else was already on it. Simon stood very nicely next to it and said "I am going to stand here and wait my turn." We went in to a store and I was buying some shorts for Eli when Simon noticed that the kid had gotten off the train--he ran out yelling "I gotta go, Mom...it's my turn!"
From the mall, we went to meet the Cohens at Mini Israel. I cancelled Simon's playdate with Boaz because Huvi called to see if we wanted to go to Mini Israel. We're going to Boaz's house on Thursday instead probably. I told Simon we were going to Mini Israel and he said "but we are already in Israel." We had a great time at Mini Israel--the kids basically went off on their own and the adults sat in the shade with Eli who stole Alli's popsicle and ate the entire thing. It was fine that the kids went off on their own, except anytime that no one was watching Simon and Ezra, they climbed over the fences and went a little too close to the exhibits. They mostly just wanted to follow the train that goes underground and you can watch it through a glass window in the floor.
We got caught in rush hour on the way home so it took us an hour and a half instead of 40 minutes to get home. Both boys slept so it wasn't so bad. Then we got home, ate dinner, Simon and David went to buy some laundry detergent and water, and then the boys had a bath and went to bed.
I really hope that in my next post I can report that the a/c has finally been installed!! Eli looks like he has the chicken pox because he has so many mosquito bites. They don't seem to be bothering him, but I still feel bad for him.