Check out our Little Man!

Yesterday Everett took to standing on his own. Probably wont be long before he is walking. He has 2 bottom and 4 top teeth. For the proud parent caption, "all of that and he is only 9 months old."

We also got our stuff the other week. It was like Christmas for all of us and nothing was damaged. On the list of most missed. Ella missed her princess dresses and I think Hanna agrees even though she doesn't know it. Momma missed all of her cooking and kitchen supplies and I agree with that. We also missed all of the toys and books we have to keep the kids entertained. Everett missed the paper and boxes as we cleared those out. I missed my road bike and have put it to good use making my 24 mile one way commute. Still lagging is the grill, we need the gas company to come bring supplies and connect it for us, not something you can get at the hardware store for yourself to do.

Ella turns 4 on Sunday. We will do a get together Saturday. She is becoming good friends with the girl across the street.

We can also make some pretty good hot salsa. Those aren't exactly green chilies but they are real close and can be very hot. Currently we roast them in the oven under the broiler until the grill gets going. We still need to find the cilantro to make it a deluxe salsa. Israelis make better Tortillas than Oregonians. In OR they were all free of 'trans fat' which translates to your tortilla will fall apart and be useless. Here they are tasty and hold together so we can make all types of delicious burritos and enjoy our salsa just like if we were home.

Everybody Is Happy We Are In Our New Home

Everett gets closer to crawling, he moves around like a monkey on hands and feet.





In the new house our first dinner was hotdogs and Hanna ate 4! The next night Ella ate 4 and asked for a 5th but daddy said no. Its so great to be out of the hotel. We went to the store the first day for some rugs because the house is all tile and concrete. The stairs might turn into a killer but we now have a gate at the bottom and Hanna has a rope railing she can reach. The dirt yard is awesome but mom and dad hope for some grass soon. We also don’t have a front gate/garage door. I woke up this morning to find one of my running shoes missing. There are 6 small dogs, 3 of them puppies, in the construction yard next door. Friendly enough but one ran off and buried my shoe. The security guy (who is there 24/7) even though he didn’t speak English understood when I showed him one shoe. It was found in good condition, just dirty.











There are two other Intel American families with us here with in a few houses. They also have kids between the ages of Ella and Everett. In the first week it took 3hrs to get a bank account and more signatures than my mortgage. It took 5hrs to get the internet working correctly for my work PC. I missed the Ashdod (city we live in) bicycle road race 300yrds from my front door on Friday (the equivalent of Saturday to the rest of the world).

Today on Saturday we went to Masada, another of King Herald’s fortresses this one at the Dead Sea. It was up on a mesa and the last of his empire to fall to the Romans. Ella walked the whole 2k and 300m elevation gain. You can see the trail zigzag up, it’s called the snake trail with many steps.






















Here is the Easter Family Pic we took.

Jerusalem

We finally made it to Jerusalem. A couple of friends took us around the city into the Christian and Jewish quarter. We went on a Saturday, the least crowded day of the week. I left my camera so these are pics from a friends. We entered at the Jaffa gate at which the tower of David stands. My history and knowledge of everything is terrible. At some point once Everett can detach from Momma for a day we will get a baby sitter and do a paid tour to see the city proper and learn all we can.







The city is filled with tourest shop to pass through on your way to the holy destinations. We went to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (or Church of the Resurrection). It was amazing to be there, the sense of history and belief is beyond explanation.











Here is a photo of the western wall in the Jewish quarter were people pray at the wall of the Second Temple. We also paid a few NIS (New Israeli Shekel that is 3.2 to the dollar) to sit on a Camel. First Hanna got scared and this was contagious to Ella. Everett was asleep.



In other good news we get to move out of the hotel and into our house tomorrow. We won't have internet or TV at home for a few days but it will be a good break from all the over load of it we are getting here in the hotel.