tu b'shvat is here!

it's tu b'shvat, jewish new year of the trees.


time to plant trees and eat lots of fruit. also time to send the kids to school with dried fruit.

here is a cute idea to package tu b'shvat fruit for your kids to take to school. it's quick, easy, cheap and best of all – not messy!

all you need are: disposable plates, shrink wrap, and pictures of flowers or trees – you can stick them on or paint them.

place the fruit on one of the plates, cover it with your shrink wrap, and then place the second plate on top – before doing that you need to cut a hole in it, so you can see your fruit through the 'window', then decorate to your heart's content (this is the part that the kids love to help with).

happy tu b'shvat!

knitting news

I just found out this great news and couldn't wait to tell all my Israeli knitting friends....there is a new(ish) internet based yarn shop in Israel called Livya Yarn...and right now they are shipping orders free of charge!

This just might mean that we won't have to search for great yarn (and all the other accesories which we need) anymore.

Here's the link to their site. 

Happy shopping and knitting....let me know how if you buy anything from them, I'm interested to hear about it.

I'm off to check out their site....

tired...but happy

the sukkot holidays are almost over and until today we haven't done much with the kids. however, i can truly say that we've now made up for that.


we started the morning off with a long overdue visit with ronit and her boys, which even included a bit of zumba...and then went off home to make some salads and get ready for a barbeque with friends.

we spent the afternoon with friends in the ashkelon national park, barbequing, eating and playing. and if the amount of dirt your kids bring home with them equals the amount of fun they had you can be sure that mine had a brilliant afternoon! and so did i [even though my friends are thirty-somethings that have been known to gripe about their kids every now and again ;-) ].

after the park we went home and scrubbed the kids and then went out again. this time to visit friends in their sukkah. we went to our friends, the glams, who had a huge family dinner in their parent's sukkah (when you have 10 kids and almost all of them have few kids of their own, well, you can just imagine how big their intimate family gatherings are), i always love visiting them on these occasions, it's always joyful and noisy, and i feel a little sad that we don't have such a big family, but grateful to be invited into theirs.

their mom, who is used to cooking for the troops, made a wonderful meal, as usual. we had just spent the entire afternoon eating, so we couldn't eat much, but we were given a 'doggy bag' to take home with us, so we'll enjoy that tomorrow.

after dinner inbal got everyone dancing, and then she started the karaoke....we had a lovely evening with all of them, the girls had fun playing with their friends and singing and ben fell asleep not long after we got there....the little guy had been up since around five this morning, so this wasn't surprising.

i'm rather tired myself, so i think i'll be off to bed.

here's hoping that ben is so tired from his long day that he'll sleep until seven tomorrow!!!

apology

i've been putting this off for a while now. you see, like most people, i'm not always really sure how to apologize. you probably know what i mean. actually, at the beginning of the school year, just before the jewish holidays, i was helping the girls with their homework and for jewish studies they had to answer questions on the subject of forgiving – one of the questions was whether, if you've waited for a long time after something (bad) has happened between you and a friend, should you still ask for forgiveness, or should you just ignore whatever happened and carry on as though everything is good, because it's been so long that it doesn't matter anymore (or something like that).

this long introduction is just my way of getting myself psyched to apologize...so here goes....

dear blog, you know how much i love you, right? we've been together for a few years now and even though sometimes i don't pay enough attention to you for a while, i always come back. i know that i promised that this time it would be different, that i wouldn't do that anymore, but i have been very, very busy for the past few months – and i just haven't had the time to sit down and give you the attention that you need. i apologize for that!!!

and before you ask...i know that you know about my relationship with fb...but, let me explain...it's a completely different kind of relationship. he doesn't expect much of my time and attention, i can just pop over for a quick visit, tell him what's been going on with me, in a nutshell, and maybe about the stuff that interests me, and then i'm off again. so, please, don't get hurt, it's just not the quality time that we enjoy together.

i know i've said it before, but i promise to try to devote more time to you. i really enjoy what we have together. i do.

bring on the good times

the summer holidays have started and i have plans for lots of fun activities with the girls – of course they include lots and lots of crafting. luckily (i do need to pay the bills), i received a lot of translation work on their last day of school, so so far i haven’t spent much time with them. yesterday that we busy with friends and today one of my friends took them to see toy story 3...so i haven't heard any complaints of boredom yet. hoping to start with the fun stuff on sunday or monday.

i gave the girls (and ben, he wouldn't be left out) journals so they could write/draw about their holidays. they are going to write (or draw, or stick pictures or mementos in it each evening)....one extra activity a day. yesterday they decorated the covers. will post pictures once they have some fun stuff in them.

i just wanted to proudly announce that both girls did very well at school, and both of them received certificates of excellence (shiraz got two – one for being the best reader in her class).

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

school's out

i knew that it had been a while since i last blogged, but didn't realize that it had been so long. there's lots of catching up to be done, maybe a little too much, so i think i'll just write about 5 things that i've been up to since the last time i wrote....

LEAP – after three years the leap project came to an end. it was a wonderful project, thanks to niki, who started it up and made it such an amazing project, but unfortunately people just weren't buying anymore. last week we said goodbye to the LEAP ladies with a small farewell party, as expected it was sad, but i hope we'll have occasion to work with at least some of the ladies again in the future.

numerology – i can't remember if i mentioned it before in my blog, but i started studying numerology, under jacov feigerson, who, as well as being a numerologist, is the chairman of the israeli reiki unity, and a very special man. jacov was kind enough to come to ashkelon once a week to teach a group of us. 

sweet stuff – last week was one of my best friend's daughter's bat mitzvah and i was honoured to help out a little. first with the invitations and then with the candy buffet, which i'm pleased to say was a mammoth success! the kids loved it (and so did the adults)... here are a few pictures, just to show you how sweet it was...

there are more pictures of the candy buffet on my facebook page.

ben is three – friday was ben's birthday. i can't believe that my baby is already three! as usual in our family the birthday celebrations were stretched out over a number of days, we started friday morning and continued up until yesterday, he got some nice birthday presents and three birthday cakes! i just love birthdays, don't you?

parties, parties and more parties...monday we went to no less than 4 parties (don't worry, we still only have three kids). ben's nursery school birthday party was monday morning, then meshi had the end of the year party for her drama class and after that both girls had their end of year class parties....we had to split up for that and i got to go to meshi's – i'll have to watch shiraz reading on video (she had two reading parts and i heard that she did very well). meshi's first grade class did a little show which was really good, they sang, danced and read – well done meshi! shiraz's class had a shabbat dinner party after their ceremony, and as always there was tons of food!

i seem to have been so busy this past month, it's so hard to believe that it's already the last day of june and from tomorrow i'll have my girls home with me for two whole months....been looking forward to this for ages! we'll keep you posted with what we've been up to.

enjoy your summer holidays!

39 and loving it

for the past few months i've been trying to get my head around the fact that this birthday will be the last that i celebrate in my 30s and that next year will be the big 4 0! i know, or at least, i've heard, that 40 is a wonderful age....new beginnings, etc. etc. and i do believe this, it is just really the thought of reaching that number, of not being in my 30s. it wasn't too long ago really when 40 was considered old age, and then it became middle age, and now, well, really i'm not too sure, but after i saw the pictures of those brazilian grandmothers, i have to say that maybe being 40 isn't old at all. it is really not being thirty-something that will take some getting used to, but i have (almost) a whole year to get used to it. 40 seems so grown up!

having said all that, i don't feel any different now, after my birthday, to how i felt the day before or the day before that, so maybe a number is just a number (says the aspiring numerologist). i have just entered year 2 of my current cycle, so i have the right to be sensitive (lots of pampering required!).

age issues aside, i had a wonderful birthday. starting on thursday night, we had a fun evening at sherri's, which ran till really late, so i started my birthday there – there were cookies and candles and singing. after a short sleep i was woken up on friday morning by three little munchkins with balloons and coffee in bed (no, the munchkins didn't bring it in) and after we took the kids to school we had the whole day to ourselves, to do the things that i wanted to do. we went to 'habaron' to buy dinner and then went to the yaffo flea market. we hadn't been there for years (the last time we went we had the girls with us) it is so much easier without kids (sorry girls, love you, but i know that just isn't your scene). the market seemed much tidier and cleaner than before, much larger too. we had a look at some great furniture, for my office, when we move, and i bought some clothes...birthday pressies from you (claire and si and the girls) so, thanks!

we had brunch at the famous dr. shakshuka's. it's been so long since i ate there, the last time was when i was really young, i can't believe that i couldn't even finish a pan of shakshuka in those days! and then went on to tel aviv, to the craft market at nachalat benyamin. i hadn't been there in ages either, it was fun to look at all the crafts and fantasize about (making and) selling my own stuff there one day....then it was back home to rest before a 'habaron' dinner with my parents....oh, and if you were wondering, mom and dad fetched ben and the girl's went to the sharon's (lior's) while we were in tel aviv. so thanks to mom, dad and rinat, for allowing me to have such a fun day.

birthday celebrations continued to the next day....lunch with the parents (we bought lots of food from habaron) and inbal's surprise birthday party in the evening. it was a karaoke party....which was lots of fun with half the guests being actors (most of the mama cast was there). great party, great fun, and of course, as usual, great food. oh, and believe it or not i even sang! maybe being 39 isn't that bad after all.

     habaron - friday morning

yaffa flea market

nahalat benyamin arts and crafts market