Birds!

Yesterday was another fun day on the last day of vacation. We had planned to go to a bird park in Tel Aviv with Ari and his family and Boaz and his family, but Uri got sick so Boaz wasn't going to be able to go. I decided to be brave and I offered to take Boaz with us. Tali was worried that he wouldn't be ok without her, but he did great and we all had a great time. It wouldn't have been as good if Ari's brothers and sisters hadn't been there, but they basically took care of the littler kids so it was really fun for everyone. And Simon is now obsessed with Ari's sister Chaviva and he wouldn't do anything without her. I think we've found a new babysitter for anytime that Marcia isn't around.
The bird place was very cool--we saw lots of pretty birds and we went to a parrot show where all the parrots did things like ride bikes and play basketball and do puzzles. Boaz was brave enough to hold a bird. I tried to hold one and it ended up biting me so I gave up! The best part of the place was the giant play area with big slides and lots of other fun stuff to play with. Simon was a little bit scared of some of the slides, but he ended up getting brave enough to go down them, mostly as long as Chaviva was holding his hand.
When we left, there was another huge park on the way back to the car, so of course Simon and Boaz really wanted to go play there. I told them they could go for 5 minutes, which turned into half an hour because Boaz climbed up to the top of a climbing structure and wouldn't come down. Simon said he would go get him, but then he went up and didn't want to come down either. I got a cute picture of them, but was starting to get annoyed because I wanted to go since Eli was getting very cranky and needed a nap. In the end, one of Ari's brothers saved the day and went and got them.
We didn't get home until almost 3, so Eli went straight for a nap and Simon and I watched some movies. Marcia came around 5 and took Eli to the park and then when they got back, David and I went to Jerusalem to have dinner with Eliav and Dina and Judah and Karen. The restaurant we wanted to go to had a really long wait, so we went to Olive which was not as good as I remember it from last time we went there but we had fun anyway.
Both kids went back to school this morning--phew!