Back to the Grind

On the first day of vacation, Simon came to me crying that he really wanted to go to gan. But he was less than thrilled when Sunday morning rolled around and I told him "guess what?? you are going to gan today!" We had gotten up really early to say goodbye to Auntie Huvi and the girls and then got to gan late anyway because David got stuck in traffic on the way back from the airport. Eli was really excited to go back and practically ran out the door. He loves him some Gan Frieda.
I picked up Eli and Orli and instead of going straight to the car which I had parked illegally on the curb (unclear why it's ok to park on some sidewalks but not others), we went across the straight to see Uri's new car. In the 5 minutes that we were gone, I got a ticket. 250 Shekels (appx $65)--I was SO annoyed!!
I love the days when I pick up Orli because she and Eli are so funny to listen to in the car. Their conversations mostly consist of talking about who is a pee-pee head. Eli often carries Orli's bag to the car for her, which is funny because he refuses to carry his own most of the time and I have to do it.
After we picked up Simon, we spent the afternoon sitting on the porch eating pizza (the kids ate it, I was too afraid of the vomit) and playing with the shrinky dinks that Cheryl and Adam got the kids for Chanukah. I had no idea that shrinky dinks still existed and they are so much fun! These particular ones came with little skateboards that you attach the shrinky dinks to after you shrink them so that they can stand up. The kids loved them.
When we were done with those, Eli wanted to watch Max & Ruby (Madi's favorite and she let Eli watch it on Alli's Ipod) but since Alli had taken her ipod with her, we didn't have it for him to watch. I found an episode on YouTube so the boys watched that and then Simon really wanted to see the Black-Eyed Peas song that goes "I gotta feeling that tonight's gonna be a good good night." He loves that song so I found the video so he could sing and dance to it. It is TOTALLY inappropriate for children so hopefully he wasn't paying too much attention to the video itself.
David called that he was on the train, so we went to the train station to pick him up. The kids love going to the train station and they like when David gives them his leftover tickets.
When we got home, David took them to the mall to go to Burger King for dinner. I wasn't sure that I was enough over my stomach bug to manage Burger King so I stayed home and watched Julie & Julia which might be my new favorite movie.
This afternoon, Simon thoroughly impressed Anat, his occupational therapist (have I mentioned her before? He goes to her for fine motor skills help). She was having him create a memory game--she gave him several sets of 2 cards and he had to draw the same picture on each. First he drew a boy so she wanted him to write "yeled" on the card. He said ok and then wrote it without her having to tell him how to spell it. She was shocked! Then, he drew a field with grass and flowers and she asked him if he knew how to spell "sadeh." He thought for a second and then said "sin" and again she was really impressed because a "samech" also makes an "s" sound. She asked him a couple of different words that start with "s" and he got them all right, knowing which start with "sin" and which with "samech." She told me that the sounding out and spelling that he is doing is very advanced for his age.