Israeli Shabbat

This past weekend we had a very Israeli Shabbat, beginning with dinner Friday night at our Israeli neighbors. They are great and we are really going to miss them when we move out of this apartment and hopefully the neighbors in our new place will also keep extra milk in their freezer so that we can have some when we run out on Shabbos. They have 3 girls and Simon turned to me at one point and said "why don't they have any boys here?" When it started to get really late, Simon begged me to let him go home and go to bed. He said he could go by himself but I didn't think that was the best idea. It was pretty late so the kids went right to bed.
They slept until almost 9 in the morning and David got up with them. I had a horrible sore throat (still do in case anyone wants to give me any sympathy) so David took pity on me and let me sleep really late. Then we walked all the way across town to Vered's for lunch. We told Simon that it was a long walk because Vered lives all the way at traffic light number 2 (we live at traffic light number 9 just for a point of reference--it's nice how the lights are numbered here). Simon told me: "traffic light number 2 is almost all the way at the end. After it there is just traffic light number 1 and then you are out of Ra'anana." He's right. After we walked there and David and I were dying of heat, Simon said "that wasn't such a long walk!" He always manges to make those kinds of comments while sitting nicely in the stroller.
We had fun at lunch--Moshe and Maytal were there with their kids and Shlomit was there too (all of these people are David's cousins--the real Israeli ones, not to be confused with the other cousins who all grew up in Chicago). Eli beat up on Lavi, the baby, and Simon very nicely shared the cars that he brought with N'orai (I have no idea how to spell that in English). When it was time for us to go, Simon held out the plastic bag for the cars and very sweetly said to N'orai "henay, sim otam b'sakit" ("here, put them in the bag"). I had drugged myself with Advil Cold and Sinus before we left and even though it claimed to be non-drowsy it was definitely making me drowsy. So when we got home, I went right to sleep and I don't know what everyone else did, but I think Eli slept too.
A little later, David took Simon to the park and I tried to get Eli to eat dinner. I think he might have also had the same sore throat as I did because he absolutely refused to eat anything at all. He was in a perfectly fine mood and went to bed with no arguments.
This afternoon, we came right home from gan and Eli went right for a nap and Simon and I hung out together. For a little while, he was playing Hot Wheels on David's computer and I was doing some schoolwork on my computer. We were both lying on my bed with the computers next to each other and we must have looked pretty cute! Then Simon told me that my computer was cooler and so we had to switch.
When Eli woke up, we talked to Sarah, Jon and Joshua on Skype for a few minutes. Sarah was too close to the camera and Simon told her "zoom out!" Then we went to meet Andi, Ma'ayan and Idan at Park Ra'anana. We went to see all the animals in the little zoo they have there and then the kids played in the big park. Simon and Ma'ayan ran off and did the entire gigantic log-looking climbing structure thing (how's that for a clear description?) from start to finish all by themselves. Eli and Idan couldn't really do most of it, but they made a valiant effort. After the park, we went to their house for dinner and the kids continued to play really nicely together.
As I've mentioned before, I love playdates that involve dinner because then we come home and it's just baths and bed. For some reason Eli had a hard time going to sleep and while he went to bed fine at 7:05 he woke up around 9 and was wide awake and jumping on David for 1/2 an hour before he went back to bed.
I have pictures to post but will do it tomorrow because I'm too tired and my throat hurts (still looking for some sympathy. It really hurts.)