Oh the Weather

There are some people out there (you know who you are...Mom!!) who don't believe me when I say that the weather here is amazing.  But today was one of those picture perfect weather days with not a cloud in the sky and it was probably around 70 degrees or so (or whatever 21 celsius translates to!).  The day started out a little rocky because we were running very late in the morning so I thought I'd do David a favor and take both kids to school.  Usually I drive Eli and David walks Simon and then walks to work.  I finally got the kids out the door and down to the car and Simon says "uh-oh, Mommy...look" and is pointing at one of the tires on the car.  It was flat as a pancake.  So we went back upstairs and I left Simon with David who was going to walk him to school after all because his school is around the corner from our apartment.  Then I grabbed the stroller and took Eli on a nice long walk to his school.  In the amount of time it took me to walk Eli to school (20 minutes) and then walk home stopping both at the bank (where I attempted to use this fancy-schmancy self-service computer thing that they have and I think I had to pay a fee to do so and then it turned out that I couldn't even use it to make a deposit which is what I wanted to do so I had to wait in line for the teller--and pay another fee, I'm sure...if only I could understand my bank statments!!) and at the dry cleaner where I'm always shocked when the guy knows which stuff is mine because he doesn't give me any sort of ticket/receipt and I bring stuff pretty infrequently and then tend to leave it there for weeks on end because I forget to pick it up...anyway, during that hour that I was gone, David dug out the spare tire from under everything in the trunk of the car, realized that the jack was missing a piece, got the guard at the school across the street to lend him a jack, couldn't actually get the tire off the car, got the guard to come back and actually get the tire off the car, and then he went to a tire place to get it fixed.  We were anticipating having to buy a new tire because that would just be our luck, but the guy fixed the punctures (apparently I drove over 2 nails--ooops!) for 50 shekels ($12) and I had the car back in time to pick up the kids.That was lucky because I had told Lauren that I would drive Meirav home.  The day got progressively better from there!  Marcia is usually with the kids on Thursday afternoons, but I switched the days around this week so I had this afternoon off from work.  We went straight from gan to the park with Tali, Boaz and Uri, Sharon and Oren and Orly, Mika and Roy.  We went to a park that we've never been to before and we will definitely be going back.  It was just such a nice afternoon.  We all brought a random assortment of food and the kids had an amazing time.  Mika and Roy only speak Hebrew (although Mika is one of the few Israelis who says Simon's name properly and not Si-MOAN) and I never cease to be amazed at how the kids can switch back and forth between languages depending on who they are talking to.  Simon, Boaz and Oren always speak to each other in English but when they play with Mika they just switch right into Hebrew.  Eli's conversations with Roy are a bit limited but they love each other and play really nicely.   Eli got his hands on a big box of Mike and Ike's and he clearly loved how that made him the center of attention and everyone wanted to be his best friend all of a sudden.

We stayed at the park until almost 4:30 and then I dropped Simon at Asher's house to play while I took Eli to music class. Eli was so exhausted by then but he was pretty good during music.  Then we went to pick up Simon who really didn't want to come home.  

We finally got home and the kids ate a quick dinner and then I started to get their bath ready.  They got in while the water was still running and I kind of forgot about it.  I was in the room with them, but I was facing away from the tub dealing with the laundry when suddenly Simon said "maybe we should turn off the water.  The tub is kind of full for Eli."  I turned around and the water was up to Eli's neck.  Good thing I'm such a good mother.  I drained out some of the water but they wanted it deep still so that they could practice going under water.  I think Simon's swimming lessons are rubbing off on Eli too because he just does whatever Simon does.  Somehow Eli figured out that he has to close his mouth and hold his breath when he goes underwater and he did as good a job as Simon did.

This is a picture I took with my phone a couple of weeks ago when I was stuck in traffic getting out of Tel Aviv.  I was bored so I was playing with the camera on my phone and I really like the way this came out for some reason!