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We spent the day today walking around the ancient city of Caesarea. The girls enjoyed the ruins, the beach, and the surf. The theater was spectacular and we all enjoyed climbing around on the rocks. It was a beautiful day to spend by the sea. We hope to return as there is so much more to see and read.
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Most of you know that Miriam turned 4 in August. Of course we celebrated her birthday then, as best we could, but she still wanted to have a birthday party with her friends. The problem was that she didn’t have any friends in Israel yet, since we had only been here 1 month. At the time, we promised to have a little party once she had some friends to invite. She has had a few playdates - 2 friends - over the past month, so we decided to go ahead and invite them to a party. Today was the big day. In the meantime, she made another friend in the last week or so and we also invited her. School is out at 12:45 on Fridays and there are no afternoon programs, so we called the party for 2:00. Corrinne, Gilly and Leeor all speak only Hebrew. Miriam’s Hebrew is coming along nicely. The party was pretty low key - really more like a group playdate than a party - but still lots of fun. They made smoothies, coloured, painted their nails, ran around outside to dry them, decorated cupcakes, lit candles/sang Happy BD, ate the cupcakes, opened the gifts and then played at the playground for a little bit.
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Abby, Zoë, and I went to Herzalia to meet with Francine, who is the secretary at Kehila (Abby and Zoë’s school in Canada and, next year, Miriam’s also). Francine is visiting Israel over the winter break. We walked on the beach and the girls played on the monkey bars. Overall a very nice morning with sun, surf and good company.
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Of course, most of you know that Naomi turned 2 in September. Well, it seems that birthdays are a pretty big deal here in Israel and since her daycare wasn’t ready to start doing birthdays back in mid-September, they celebrated her birthday at “school” this week. We had to buy snacks and cupcakes and all sorts of other things and show up there for the big party. Back home in Canada, we would drop a large box of Timbits at their preschool in the morning and that would be the extent of our involvement in the at-school birthday celebration. Anyway, the party was fun and Naomi enjoyed it very much.
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Today we went to a soccer game at the Teddy Kolleck Stadium in Jerusalem. The team is in 2nd place in the **4th** division. A friend of ours, Danny, is a part owner of this team that made Israeli news for being the first team owned by fans. While it was only semi-professional football, we had a nice time, especially since the girls were with their good friends Zohar and Kedem.
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Wow - Chanukkah in Israel. Very busy and very special. We lit the candles on the 3rd night with Stephanie and Jordana, the next night at Pua and Baruch’s and the next night at Muli and Idit’s. We spent the last night at the Kurtzman’s - their daughters Zohar and Kedem go to school with Abby and Zoe. Each girl lit their own Chanukkiah - that’s 6 Chanukkiot x 9 candles (8 because it was the 8th night + 1 to light all the others) = 54 candles blazing on one table in one small apartment - and we lived to tell the story. We had parties at the girls’ schools, everyone had some number of days off from school and/or tzaharon plus Zoe’s birthday fell on the 2nd night. Phew, we made it.
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Zoë invited some of her friends from school, the apartment complex and tzaharon (afternoon program) for an afternoon of smoothies, pizza, cupcakes and colouring. We started by designing and making personal smoothies with M&Ms, chocolate, ice cream and frozen fruit. After the smoothies, there was cupcake decorating along with some pizza and a cake. All had a great time. We also celebrated the next day when we went to Pua and Baruch’s house for the 5th night of Chanukkah.
