Hebrew Blogger

Blogger is apparently very proud of itself every time it introduces its services in a new language and it congratulates itself on the main log-in page whenever this happens. It is cool that now Blogger is in Hebrew, but it means that all of my menus when I am using Blogger now show up in Hebrew which sometimes makes things a little bit confusing for me! Not that that is an excuse for my continued lack of blogging. And I really have no excuse for the lack of pictures...I'm going to try to remember to take some today!
Last Thursday was Oren's birthday party immediately after Playball. So basically the kids all got a double-dose of playball and then some pizza, cake and candy. They had a blast! Eli even participated a little bit in the games for the birthday party. Sometimes in Playball, Dion gives the kids beanbags and has them put the beanbags on their foot and then lift their foot to sort of kick it/throw it in the air. He wasn't doing that at the party, but there were beanbags out and Eli took one and put it on his foot and then kicked his foot in the air. He pays attention!
We rushed home after the party because it was so late. Marcia and David met us at home and then David and I went to meet Karen and Judah for dinner in Savion.
Friday night, we went to Boaz's house for dinner. Poor Simon really wanted to set up the track and play with Thomas. He set it all up and then Boaz took Thomas and wouldn't give it back. Simon was such a big boy and settled for just using Annie and Clarabel for a while but then it just was annoying him so much that not only wouldn't Boaz give him Thomas, but he wasn't even using it! Simon tried negotiating with him by offering him lots of other things, but in the end, Tali had to intervene and make Boaz give the train to Simon. I never know quite what to do in those types of situations. If Boaz was actually playing with the train, then I don't think he should have had to give it to Simon, but he was clearly just holding on to it for spite. Simon does the same thing all the time so maybe it was good for him to get a taste of his own medicine but I still felt bad for him. Other than that, the kids all played very nicely.
On Saturday, David took both kids to shul really late and left me with some peace and quiet that I needed in order to clean up the disaster area that was our house! I finished just in time for them to come home and then all of our company came shortly after. Deborah Dickson and her 3 kids came and we also had people that we met at Abby and Jonny's a couple of weeks ago and really liked--Efrat and Ben and 2 of their 3 kids as well as Ben's father who was in town. He was Deborah's date since Michael was out of town. All of the kids had a great time, although Yoav and Eitan liked playing with the rock garden a little too much. Simon, Dalia and Yarden were in charge of making sure that they didn't throw the rocks all around, but in the end, we had a lot of rocks to sweep up! The Dicksons stayed until Shabbos was almost over which was great because there was no time for naps so this way the kids all entertained each other and then made us read them the same Bob the Builder book over and over and over again.
After Shabbos, I went to meet some friends from school in Tel Aviv where we spent 4 and a half hours working on our finance homework--how is that for a fun way to spend a Saturday night?? Another thing to add to my "only in Israel" list: we were doing our homework in the Azrieli Center, a big mall in Tel Aviv. We were sitting at a table outside Aroma, which is a cafe that has branches all over the country, some are kosher and some aren't. One of the people who I was with, Eli, and I went into Aroma to get something to drink. Eli looks very religious with a big beard and a kippah. The second we walked through the door, the 2 people behind the counter immediately said "lo kasher!! lo kasher!!" making sure that he would know that the place wasn't kosher and he shouldn't eat there. We went around the corner and found a kosher place, so it was no big deal, but I loved the fact that they did that!