Yom Ha'atzmaut

Yesterday was Israel's 61st birthday and we had a great time celebrating!  The festivities began Tuesday night when we went to a barbecue at Tali's along with the Sachses and another family who we had never met before.  We had a great time and ate too much food.  We didn't leave until almost 10pm and David insisted on taking the kids and walking to Park Ra'anana for all the festivities.  I thought it was a terrible idea since it was so late, but the boys really wanted to go (although Eli ran down the driveway ahead of us and I said "Eli, wait, where are you going?" and he turned and looked at me like I was an idiot and said "the park!" He thought we were going to the park across the street from us to play!).  We had a good time watching the fireworks and eating candy apples and we got home around midnight.  

We slept late in the morning and then walked to the park again for the big barbecue with lots of people.  We ate more meat and had more fun.  

We left the park around 2 to come home and get the car and drive to Beit Shemesh to ANOTHER barbecue at Dodi's house with all of the cousins.  Simon and Eli both fell asleep in the car and consequently were not in the best of moods when we got there, but Simon warmed up quickly and ran off to play with all the boys his age.  In this group of cousins as well, Eli doesn't have anyone his age, but he managed to keep himself entertained.  The older kids like to play with him so he wasn't lacking any attention (since I know Ducky was worried!).

Today it was back to school for the kids.  David had off from work so this morning we went to try to buy outdoor furniture.  I had seen something that I really liked in Home Center a while ago and unforunately it was on sale for 50% off during the exact week that we were struck with the plague (not to be confused with swine flu which we don't have yet, but someone in Kfar Saba which is the city next to Ra'anana does so now i'm not leaving my house) so we missed that opporunity.  Despite the fact that it's no longer on sale, the store only had one set left and it didn't have the cushions so was pretty much useless.  The salesperson checked all the other branches (although we wouldn't have been able to go to Kfar Saba if they had had it because of the swine flu) but no place had it.  So we are back to the drawing board.  I really want to get something so that we can actually use our porch before it gets too hot to go outside!!

The rest of the day was not too exciting.  I picked Simon up from school and we had this conversation:

Simon: is today yom chamishi (Thursday)?

me: yup

Simon: so tomorrow is yom shishi and then yom shabbat, right?

me: that's right

Simon: and then yom rishon and then yom sheni!  I love yom sheni because we get to play "yam yabasha."

me: you get to do what??

Simon: play "yam yabasha."  We put out blue squares and white squares.  The blue are the water and the white are the sand.  When they say "yam" we go to blue and when they say "yabasha" we go to white.

me: How come you only get to play it on yom sheni?

Simon: because only Ruti plays it with us and that's when she is there 

me: wasn't Ruti there today?

Simon: yes.  

And then he looked really confused so I changed the subject.  

As I mentioned, my computer can't read the camera card (and I tried connecting the camera with the cable but that doesn't work either) so I will post pictures hopefully tomorrow--sometime when David isn't using his computer so i can do it from there.