Karaoke, Israel Style

On Thursday, I tried to enjoy my last morning of freedom before Simon's vacation starts. I celebrated by going to Coffee Bean with Abby instead of going to the supermarket like I should have. Instead, I took the kids on a field trip to Mega after school. They were very well behaved. Eli sat in the big back part of the cart because Simon really wanted to sit up front. Eli spent most of the time sitting nicely and eating grapes. Or I should say "stealing" grapes since I think you pay by the weight and the package of grapes was significantly lighter by the time we checked out. Simon was in charge of holding our number at the chicken counter and watching to tell me when it was our turn. He was good at this and I was able to go get a few more things and get back in time to not miss our turn since he was telling me each time the number changed.
When we got home, Eli went right for a nap and Simon played. We were supposed to meet his friends at the park before Playball, but Eli was still sleeping and Simon was playing nicely and it was very hot outside so we skipped the park and then went to Playball when Eli woke up. Right before we left, Shmuel came over with some people who are looking at this apartment to rent after we move out. I heard the woman say that she didn't like the spray-painted sky behind the mirrored skyline of NY (can you imagine someone not liking that?) and I almost died when Shmuel said "no problem, you can paint over it. Whatever you don't like, you can paint over." Um, if he had told me that I maybe wouldn't have had to live with this bizarre "artwork" for the past year!!!! David and I think that Joey (Shmuel's son, who owns the apartment) must have decided that he's not coming back and he's just going to continue renting the apartment because he was SO adamant with us that we not touch any of the walls or even hang anything.
Anyway, while Simon was at Playball, Eli hung out with Uri and Yiscah since parents and siblings are no longer allowed to watch Playball because it was too distracting to the kids. Dion also let us know that he's starting Playball for 2 year olds and almost 2 year olds right after Pesach so I think Eli will go. I'm so curious as to how that will go, but I think he will have fun.
After Playball, we went to Boaz's house for dinner which was much more civilized than last time we all had dinner together at Burger Ranch.
We went home and Marcia came to babysit and David and I went out for dinner and karaoke with the Dicksons, the Grays and the Nussbaums. Unfortunately, we never got to sing because there were a million people and we left before it was our turn. Personally, I think there was some discrimination and they didn't let us take a turn because we wanted to sing an English song and every song that actually was sung was in Hebrew. There were some pretty bad people...it certainly didn't compare to the Raccoon Lodge on 85th and Amsterdam, but we had fun anyway!
Friday was Simon's first day of vacation. He went to the park with Eli and Marcia while I cooked and I'm not sure what David did. We all had a nice Shabbos dinner together. In the middle of dinner, Eli picked up his little kiddush cup and said "more" so I put some juice in it. He got a very serious look on his face, held up the cup and said something that sounded like "blah blah blah blah blah" and then "amen" and then drank it...he was making kiddush! We were all very proud of him.
This morning David took both kids to shul so that I could finish cleaning and getting ready for lunch. We had fun company for lunch--Abby, Jonny and Jake and Michael, Julia, Boaz, Gabriella and Baby Gidon. Simon and Boaz (who Simon calls "not Boaz from Gan Frieda") played super well together. I love hearing Boaz talk because he has the cutest most proper British accent I've ever heard. He and Simon were playing with cars near the window and suddenly I saw out of the corner of my eye, something fall out the window. I said "uh-oh, what happened" and I guess Boaz thought he was in trouble because he ran to the corner and put his hands over his ears. Simon was quick to his defense and said "no, no, he did it by accident!" I reassured Boaz that he wasn't in trouble (and asked his parents what happens when he does get in trouble that prompted him to sit in the corner with his hands over his ears! They said he always does that, apparently in anticipation of getting yelled at...but he usually only does it when he's not actually in trouble) and Michael took the boys down to get the car. As soon as they came back up, Simon "accidentally" through another car out the window. After that one was retrieved, I decided it was time to close the window!
Everyone stayed until after 4 and then when they left David took the kids to the park and I took a nap. I bartered with David and told him that his choice was either to take a nap but then he'd have to clean up everything from lunch or I could take a nap and then I'd clean up everything. He chose to let me nap (yay) and then when I got up I found that he had even washed a bunch of dishes too:)
Simon has started playing games at www.postopia.com which he found out about on a cereal box. Tonight he said to me "can I play a game on post-tokyo?" How could I say no to that??