ein gedi

we decided a few years ago that every year we would go out on a family retreat. at least a weekend... last year, it was a full month (with lots of relatives - hurray!) this year, it was very difficult to make time for that , so we settled for exactly weekend in ein gedi. Mind you, I am 8.5 months pregnant, and ein gedi was a scortching 39 degrees celsius (102.2 deg farenheit), which left us little choice except to bum out at the pool. Its good that this was our initial plan ....omer once said that this is the most beautiful pool in the world, because you see the dead sea on one side, and Yehuda desert on the other side.

We had a nice private tour of the kibbutz at one of the evenings (the whole kibbutz is recognized by UNESCO as a botanical garden, with over 1000 species of plants from 6 continents0, and Omer and Dori decided to go hiking in the near by mountains despite the heat.

I have a new camera, so the pool was a great chance to try to understand the way-too-many-features-and functions it has. A lot of pictures are over exposed or underexposed, but there are a few really good ones - see for yourself.

OPS-My little boy is 27

Happy Birth day Ron. Congratulations.

Keep on growing, just like you did so far.

We love you very much.

Love, Mom, Dad and the whole world.

quarterly update...

Not sure when was thelast time we blogged, so here goes:

1. dori had his 6th birthday in may. he was very happy. it was very noisy. at some point 30 kids were jumping on my sofas. 30 KIDS!!!, and that's not counting the ones sitting elsewhere.

2. my brother got married in June. it was very laid back, small wedding, friday noon relaxed mood, in a high tower overlooking all of tel aviv. it was better than anyone expected.

3. we went on a "families trip" - 8 families from dori's kindergarten for a weekend, short hike with the kids (inside a river - I gave up halfway trough, just was too scared that my balance is so off because of the pregnancy, that I would slip and fall), all of us slept all together in a huge tent on matresses after we bar-b-q'ed lots of food, and went to the (shrinking) sea of galilee for a dip in the water the next day - it was great. we are hoping that another trip will be organized in a few months, although his whole kinderegarten has split up (see next item...)

4. Dori is going to start 1st grade (OMG) in Sep 1st. Today we found out who is in his class, which is very few kids from his current kindergarten, but a whle lot of friends from the neighborhood, so we are really happy.

5. The heat/humidity is killing me softly . 7 more weeks to go, and it just gets hotter and heavier.