Noam's bat mitzvah

We went to the bat mitzvah in Jerusalem, we played in the pool, we had excellent food, we saw a video telling the entire story of Noam's life, and we got this lovely picture of Mommy Liya, Baby Mikael, and Noam the star.

 

ראש השנה 2009

סיפור יומיומי מהיום: מיכאל למד בגן על שילוב הטעמים: תפוח בדבש. שיחה משפחתית התנהלה כך: אמא ליה: אכלת תפוח בגן? מיכאל: כן!! לוקחים את התפוח ( ובתנועת טבילה) טובלים אותו בדבש. אמא ליה: ושמים את זה באוזן?! מיכאל: לא(בתנועת אכילה) אוכלים אותו פונה לעופר ומסביר לו עם תנועות

?????אבא, לוקחים את התפוח וטובלים אותו בדבש ואוכלים - אתה מבין אבא

Rosh Hashana 2009

Just a day-to-day story from today: Mikael learned in day care about the mixture of flavors: apple and honey. We had the following family conversation:

Mommy Liya: did you have apple and honey at day care?

Mikael: Yes!! You take the honey [demonstrating with a dip gesture] and dip it in the honey.

Mommy Liya: And then you put it in your ear?

Mikael: No!! [demonstrating with an eating gesture] you eat it!! [turning to Daddy Opher and explaining using gestures] Aba, you take the apple, dip it in the honey and then eat it. Do you understand????? Do you get it????

daddy's and sons

one night we all took a walk with Mikael on his scooter. at some point i forced saba emi and opher to pose for a picture. when mikael saw what was going on, he hurried off the scooter and stood next to saba emi. i missed that moment but opher scooped him up and i was able to catch 3 generations together...

Doda Ayala and Mikael

tampa airport

the lovely thing about the donchin family is we do things as a group...so when i left tampa, it was a group activity and for mikael another adventure...here we are all parking in the garage, and walking to the gate...

Drawing with Daddy

a rainy day led to some fantastic art work....

the donchin garage

Mikael discovered boxes...and a new game. the 2nd box was brought out so i could also play, however we both discovered my butt doesnt fit in a box. thankfully no one took pictures of that and mikael agreed to sit in the 2nd box also.

The Garage

Mikael seemed to figure out early the Donchin Garage was the epicenter of all activities, except eating. People go to work and come back from work from the Garage, any car related activity begins and ends in the garage, the garage door opener lends excitement...so all in all it led to Mikael really liking the garage and in general the garage making him happy.

A day at MOSI

arrival at MOSI...Opher detailed the trip in other posts...these are some of my pictures...

MOSI...

MOSI had a very exciting glass elevator. great daddy/son pictures were captured..Mikael is saying "OOOOOOOOO"

Busch gardens

On Tuesday, we met Alexandra and her daughter Sapir (Stephanie) and her son Ilan at Kidz club. Alexandra heard Mikael talking to me hebrew so she asked where we were from. She and her husband Dror moved to Tampa a whle ago, and she was glad to help out in any way she could. On Wednesday evening, Mikael and I went over to their house, nearby where my parents live, for pizza and ice cream and games. Then, on Thursady, the day before our flight, the families went together, along with Samira and her two children, Erfan and Armen, who only moved to Tampa about a week ago. Aside from the sort of standard "here we are standing around in Busch gardens" types of shots, there are a few pictures of the wading pool that Mikael and the kids played around in.

There were two sad things about the wading pool. First, we found some poo in it, and they had to shut the pool down for about 45 minutes while they refiltered the water. In the meantime, we had to move on. The even sadder thing is that I dropped the camera in the pool. That's the reason there are no more photos of Busch gardens, where Mikael rode on amusement park rides, had a nutritious lunch of hamburger and french fries, took a long train ride, and had some ice cream. You can sort of imagine the scene.

 

 

 

 

Canoe trip

Mikael and I woke up early one morning and headed down over to the Hillsborough River State park where canoes can be rented for a reasonable amount of money. The whole trip was pretty fun. If I was a little more experienced with canoeing, I would probably be better at judging how much fooling around a 2 year old can do in an old unflippable battle tank of a canoe. As it was, I erred on the side of safety, and Mikael probably had less fun than he would have otherwise. Honestly, I think the thing he liked best of all was wading in the river after the trip with his new 'pool shoes' that we got as a freebie last time we bought him sandles.

I remembered to bring along my GPS watch, so here are Google earth pictures of our trip. We went exactly one kilometer and it took us about 12 minutes to do half a kilometer downstream and another 22 minutes to do the same distance back up stream. I'm sure you could use that to figure out how fast the river is going.