Moving Day

In seven days we will be back in home. Everyone is excited. I had a quick transition at work to my replacement and this week will be spent packing my office and saying my goodbbyes. Here in an interesting thought, Israel is only 265 miles from north to south and we managed to drive our car 13,000 miles in the 16 months here. Thats enough to drive from one end to the other 50 times but we never even made it all the way north.

Everett is a master of the scooter and kick bike.

More Jerusalem

This is the best way for Everett to sleep, just let him get all warn out and lie down where he wants. We also been doing a bunch of swimming. We are going to miss having a pool.

We did another trip to the old city and saw some new thing. We went into the Muslim courtyard of Dome of the Rock. It's an incredible place with wide open spaces that you don't see anywhere in the old city of this magnitude. Muslim's control the area and it is considered holy to them because it is where Muhammad ascended to Heaven. Jewish consider the site the Holy of Holies and pray at the western wall because it is the closest spot to this location. We also walked the Rampart (the wall around Jerusalem). The kids and I thought it was really cool, Anita was having a heart attack worrying about the kids falling through the railing.

While in Jerusalem a group of soldiers went by catching my teenage niece's attention. Hanna was also winking at the soldiers.

All the kids got rides as we did a lot of walking. We had a good time showing my brother and his family around.

Deluxe Resort

While Jared was here we spent the middle weekend at a deluxe resort in Egypt on the Red Sea. Taba is just over the border from Israel, you have to park your car and take a taxi to the resort. We spent lots of time relaxing by the pool with the kids swimming and letting my hand heal. Anita and Jared’s family did a scuba trip and I took the kids on a glass bottom boat ride. We had a great time and Jared used the last day for a launching point for a day trip into Jordan to see Petra. The only drawback was once we got back into Israel some had slashed two of the tires in the parking area, sucked dealing with that in 90deg heat but it only took a few hours. The lease car company took care of it for us.