Zucchini Hunt Deemed a Success...and other totally random photos

I seem to have lost some momentum on my Israel photos, due to the end of the school year among other things. Here's a picture of a flower on the beach at Tel Aviv on our last day, totally out of order:



I'm up to Passover and there's where I stick for awhile. We got to meet a bunch of cousins for the first time. Here's my Sweet Pea with one of them:



A few random pictures NOT from Israel. These first two are from Half Price Books. I wonder which shelves hold the "old and boring" books?



And who the heck are supposed to read the children's books if the children aren't allowed to read them?



The-Guy-Who-Knows-A-Song-About-A-Chicken and my boy hunted this zucchini:





Obviously zucchini burgers are on the menu.

In other news, unless I brought one home with me yesterday, I seem to have made it through an entire school year without catching lice. And I think I've planned enough projects for this summer to last me the next three summers.

Happy weekend and Memorial Day everyone!

Because Who Doesn't Need to Rent a Few Live Chickens Every Now and Again?

When I walked into the lobby of my kids' school on Tuesday and saw a coop full of live chickens, I thought the obvious:

"Oh. They have chickens today."

If I thought any more deeply about, I just naturally assumed they were doing something educational as well as exciting and hands-on.

It turned out that I thought wrong though, because when I went in to see the receptionist, her phone had no handset. And there was almost no light in the entire building, because the light bulbs were removed and hidden. And there were random locks on every locker, and pretend appendages sticking out from ceiling tiles*.

And there was a pick up truck in the cafeteria:

The point of senior prank, as I understand it, is to cause enough chaos so that it is impossible to hold regularly scheduled classes the following day. I'm going to say this year's crop of seniors was fairly successful.

Where did they get the live chickens I wondered?

"They rented them." my Sweet Pea informed me.

But of course. What kind of sorry excuse for a city would this be if one couldn't even rent a few live chickens for making mischief?

Have I ever mentioned that I love my kids' school? More Israel photos coming next time and have a great weekend!

*Including the skeleton arm sticking out from the chicken coop, although most of them were arms and legs, not bones.

First and Foremost, I'm not in Israel Anymore. I am Infatuated With Palm Trees Though. Apparently.

It turns out that I confused a couple of people, which is not unusual. These are pictures from our second day in Israel. I'm not STILL in Israel though. I'm just really, really slow at posting the pictures.

I took about six kajillion photos of palm trees. I'll spare you all but these few though:







Actually, I lied. Here are a few more:







Most of the palm tree pictures I took out of the car window on the way to the Dead Sea at Ein Gedi. The water in the Dead Sea is some of the saltiest on earth and I can tell you from personal experience that it tastes terrible; I would never have imagined that there's a big problem with people drinking it. But it seems I'm just lacking in imagination:



Here's the Dead Sea:



And here are The-Guy, My Boy, and Older and Younger Gal a floatin' in the salty stuff:



All that stuff near the bottom of the picture you can sort of see under the water are like rocks covered in salt or rocks made of salt. The salt just chunks up like this:




And since that's probably about as many palm trees and salt rocks most people need to see on any given day, I'll stop for now. Have a great weekend everyone!

Pictures of My Boy Not Getting His Toes Run Over in Jerusalem

I've managed to plow through the rest of our first day in Israel! Quite the feat, I know...

We ended up seeing the Arab section of the market twice, once on purpose, once on accident. The on purpose time was after the tour of the Western Wall.

They said everything was fine, fine, fine. Just make sure you are between the two armed guards. I'm sure it would have been fine without the guards too. The reason I can be so sure is that we didn't have any guards when we went there by accident. We saw the Jewish section too, of course.







We walked around the old city a little. Or maybe we were just looking for the way back to the hotel, I'm not sure.



I was really kind of certain this taxi was going to lop off my boy's toes. But, since he already had his bar mitzvah, obviously my job was just to photograph the event. In any case, I'm pretty sure he's now big enough to whisk me out of danger rather than the other way around. Still, even in this picture those tires look kind of close to his feet. In real life they looked way, way closer:



He made it to the other side with all ten toes still attached:



Near our hotel, The Montiefiore Windmill



The Jerusalem Railway Station:



And a random running guy. Wikipedia didn't have a link for him. I don't know why.



Then it got to be night. I still had to take pictures though:



And that's all for day one! At this rate I should be able to get all the pictures up by the time in just the blink of an eye! Or at least by the time my boy graduates college.