Bedouin Tent

On Thursday morning, David left really early to go with his company to a Bedouin tent in the middle of the Judean Desert, about 3 hours south of here. They had some sort of retreat/meetings on Thursday and on Friday morning and then the spouses were invited to join them on Friday afternoon for Shabbat. On Thursday night, I explained to Simon that David and I were going to be away for Shabbat and that Marcia was going to sleep over and we would be home after Shabbat. He thought that was a great idea.
I took Simon to Gan on Friday morning where he was the Shabbat Abba, so he had to bring a cake and he was in charge of making kiddush at their Shabbat celebration. He was very proud of this and took the responsibility very seriously. I got the report today from Frieda that he did a very good job! He also said his first real complete sentence in Hebrew when he was done eating and he said "ani seyamti l'echol" which means "I finished eating." He said it gramatically correct too. Today Simon and I were on the phone with Ducky and I asked him who was the Shabbat Abba and he responded with "ani!"
Anyway, back to Friday...after dropping off Simon, I got all my stuff together and then went to meet the bus that was taking us to the Bedouin tent. Eli was clearly realizing that something was going on because he was very clingy to me and usually he much prefers Marcia over me. She took him to the park so that he wouldn't have to watch me leave, which was probably a good idea.
The whole Bedouin tent thing was much better than I was expecting! The place was actually quite nice--we didn't really sleep in the tent (although that was an option and a lot of people did), we opted for a private room that was very clean and had a nice bathroom and heat. On Shabbos we went on a 3 and a half hour hike that I thought was going to be much easier than it actually was! I almost gave up and turned around when I saw the part where we literally had to climb straight down part of the mountain, knowing that we were going to have to climb back up it to get back. But I was brave and I did it and it was a lot of fun. The pictures are of the view from right outside our room.
The boys were already sleeping when we got home around 9 last night. Marcia said they had a great time and were very well behaved and didn't seem to care that we were gone. She said every time Simon asked her if he could do something he said "my mommy lets me." I went to give them kisses and tried to get them to wake up, but they didn't. Simon did wake up at 2am to go to the bathroom and then he asked me to lie in bed with him. I did for a minute and he suddenly said "does one plus one equal two?" I said yes and he said "but is two also eleven?" I thought that was actually pretty smart because he was picturing two one's which make an eleven.
We didn't do much today--Eli took a big nap after daycare and Simon and I watched Toy Story while we ate lunch. Eli didn't wake up until almost 5 so we just played for a little bit and then the kids ate dinner and had a bath and played more.