ISRAEL 2011: Part I

Last Friday morning we got back from a three-week trip to Israel. It was an amazing time and we loved spending time with Moises' parents. We would have loved to stay another month if it weren't for obligations back home. Moises' sister, Becky (Tia Bebe) had spent most of Spring there and fortunately we were able to catch her at the tail-end of her trip. For the second half, my parents came which I will post about later in part II.




We have some good friends from the Quad Cities move to Israel last year who we were able to meet for lunch one afternoon. We stopped by their house and Asher couldn't get over their "pony-size" dog!


After leaving the tank truck museum, we wanted to get Asher's picture with one of the soldiers. It was the funniest thing because Asher would not for the life of him give us a normal smile for the camera; instead it was this silly little squint.







Almost every night Zeide would sit down here with the kids and review all of that days photos and videos of their adventures!









Elie and Borja (Becky's chihuahua) really hit it off. They wrestled, shared food, and toys together. One of Elie's first words was "sit".



We took a trip to the Tel Aviv zoo. It's really cool because it has two parts: the regular zoo that you walk around the animals enclosed and the safari part where you drive your car with the animals (zebras, giraffes, hippos and even lions) roaming free around you!

The zebras taken from our car

In the pond you'll see the backs of hippos that look like rocks in the water.

Tia Bebe







Last time we were in Israel, which was two years ago, we ate at a restaurant where Asher fell in love with the waitress. This trip, we revisited this same restaurant and sure enough, the same girl was there! We got her picture with him again... maybe we will start a tradition! Click here to see our blog post from two years ago.











Asher and Babi had a bedtime ritual by reading stories to each other.