In Case of a Bad Day:

Take Eitan's advice and SMILE.

That balloon was a gift from the folks at the Orange store yesterday. And here in Israel, orange is not just a fruit, but the name of a cell phone company. Now, you might ask, why is an Israeli phone company named Orange- in English? No clue...but it is.

And they gave it to him for having such good behavior while Nina was taking care of some business. And by good behavior I mean demanding to be let out from his stroller and running around the store like a crazy man running into the employee only section and trying to knock down all the displays. Greeeeatt.

But once the balloon came into play, well, the whole afternoon turned around and it was all about big laughs and peek-a-boo.

Enjoy!

Yom Haatzmaut- Airplanes, BBQ and Flags

Being in Israel in Yom Haatzmaut is all about the Barbecues, or mangals. People go to popular parks as early as 5am to stake out a prime spot.

We decided to skip the chaos of the parks and have an afternoon barbecue at Esty's - complete with a gas grill and an amazing front terrace that overlooks the Kenesset. It was a beautiful day, warm, but breezy and not a cloud in the sky.

There were four planes there. And awesome photography :).

On Yom Haatzmaut the Israeli airforce shows off their moves with fly overs around the whole country. It's a good thing it's a small country. Around noon the planes started overhead in amazing formations, coming close together and diverting, etc. It was amazing. Eitan was so excited he was just bouncing up and down screaming Airplane, which sound more like eh-pane, but we knew.

The barbecue was great, delicious and we learned that Eitan seriously likes chicken legs. At a barbecue back in Kemp Mill a couple weeks ago, he couldn't get enough of chicken cut up that Gadi was feeding him, but here he upped the ante and just took hold of the pulkey himself and went at it. And he wouldn't put it down for anything. It was hilarious. Especially as I remember that while I was pregnant with him, even the thought of a chicken bone would send me to the nearest barf bag.

And of course, this city was covered in flags. Big ones on buildings, weird vertical ones with long blue stripes and a small star in the center (that just looked off to me), as I mentioned before, flags on car windows, and for the first time I noticed flag "cases" for the side mirrors on cars. Now, these seem crazy to me because they overhang onto the mirrors a bit, and from what I've seen of Israeli drivers, well...they need all the mirror they can get.

In Honor of Yom Haatzmaut

So no pictures of flags, fireworks or people dancing in the street, although we heard it all last night. We're headed out in a bit for a BBQ, of course, but for now I want to post about one of our favorite things in Israel, the strawberries.

They've been in season since Chanuka, and from what I understand the season's ending now, so goodbye strawberries. You've been a great snack. And so much better then the strawberries we have in the US. So yay Israel!

In order to make up for yesterday's lack of photos of Eitan post, here are some shots of Eitan enjoying lots of the last batch of our shuk "bawbeies"

PS- Just a scene from our house now, no pictures...Ami woke up and saw the Caps (DC's hockey team) won last night/this morning for us in OT, game 7 of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs sending them to advance. He proceeds to scream OT, OT, OT, and Eitan repeats OT OT OT...his friends in NY call- they're out celebrating, and he's now wearing his Ovie jersey, taking shots of vodka with them for breakfast.  It's going to be an interesting day.

Nesting?

It seems that although we were gone for three weeks, the ledge outside our bedroom window was occupied, because we found (and by we I mean Ami) the beginnings of a bird's nest. Over the past couple days we've seen one bird "mommy" sitting on this little pile and another bird "daddy" bringing over more supplies.

Which is awesome because we hadn't seen them for the first couple days we were back, so thought they got scared off. But no, they're hanging out, mostly in the mornings making sounds like "ho ho ho ho". Come and visit and you can hear my imitation in person, or just come hang out in our room and hear the real thing.

They do get scared off when Eitan screams or when we get too close to the window (like when I took this picture, sorry bird!) but seem to come back a bit later. So that's cool.

Mommy Bird

Nest is all the way right in a shady spot under the leaf branch!

Photo Dump: America!

As promised here are a bunch of pictures from our trip. I will be the first to admit that we didn't take very many at all, and the ones we did take are kind of random. But we were too busy having fun! And also had a lot of other people taking lots of pictures (so, ahem, Mom, Jackie, anyone else who took, please send them our way and  I'll add them here).

Enjoy!

Nanny/Nephew Baby Reunion

Cooking Assistant

Caleb VW! and the Nose Picker. Photo courtesy of Holly (love!)

One of MANY  Itai self portraits. This little rat must have gotten a hold of the camera one day...

National Building Museum

Running STRAIGHT for the fountain. Good Times.

Giggles on the Metro

Nat's Game!

Playing with Ice. Hours of Fun. Hi Liat!

Blanket Obsessed in Central Park

Watching the runners. Still blanket obsessed.

I love this picture! Love!

We're Ba-ack

After three weeks in America we arrived back here to Jerusalem yesterday. Goodbyes at home were awful (again...), but I knew we'd be okay once we got back to our little apartment. And we are. Mostly thanks to a combination of gummies, Marzipan rugelach and mushroom burkeas, and the happiness that comes with completing an international trip with an 18 month old little fella. That doesn't mean it wasn't so hard to leave behind our friends and families (again...).  Especially now that Eitan is old enough to really play with everyone and had so much fun particularly with his big cousins who he has morphed into one entity "Idat".  We were definitely not good enough about taking pictures these weeks, but at some point will get some keepers off of the camera and up online here.


So we're here, and are having an exciting adventure, and we're going to be positive, right? OK?  Positive, Positive Positive (name that movie).

It's also very nice to return to spring in Jerusalem. Spring is a season that seems not to really exist in DC, so we are trying to enjoy these few weeks of low 70's days to the maximum.

We also returned in time for the season of the "yoms". Yesterday was Yom Hashoa, we missed most of it other then noticing flags at half mast on our cab ride home from the airport, and today running some errands I noticed a bunch of  kids on the street are selling Israeli flags in preparation for Yom Hazikaron and Yom Haatzmaut. More on those next week...promise.

So we're going to head into Shabbat and rest and enjoy the sunny but not yet too hot days. 

Shabbat Shalom!