sittin' around, livin' the dream....

for the record, we made it to israel!!!!!

if you check out any aliyah sites which i just cannot list, you'll see pictures of us (you can tell who we are by our son a, the kid wearing the yellow hat, long hair, pacifier and "i'm making aliyah" shirt.)

so here's the fun stuff....

we get to jfk with our dog, emily, who for some reason refused to relieve herself prior to being crated for the 12 hours of flight time for which she wasn't drugged due either to her advanced age, or the vet's desire to make us wash our dog upon arriving in israel.

my folks, my brother, my aunt and uncle, and our close friend and 2 of her kids come to see us off. as we're going through the search, seizure, scanning, metal detectors and remove your shoes part of leaving, e realizes that she has to go to the bathroom. so we run, shoeless, through the departures area. little a must have also walked through the metal detector and when we returned, still shoeless, he was hysterically unhappy. fortunately by this time emily was already being loaded as were the three duffle bags and six huge boxes and the pack & play that we stupidly brought with us. you'd think we were moving...oh, right, we were. so it was just the five of us, a stroller, and five carry on bags. (note to self: next time when making aliyah, only bring what each person can carry by himself.)

we board the plane. it takes off. the kids are thrilled...for all of what, maybe an hour. somewhere along the way we had tantrums and food and finally sleep. there's no turning back at this point....

we get to israel.

the plane lands and we get off. someone intervied me on live radio. they asked something like "how does it feel to have just made aliyah?" and i answered something stupid with my cartoon lsd-ish grin plastered across my face like "amazing, i can't believe it" and probably drooled all over my land. so this interviewer guy is talking about all sorts of stuff and i just cannot even focus due to weeks of exhaustion and i must have said the same thing again and again.

we board the bus to get to the terminal. when we get off, our friends y & k and rabbi ds are there to greet us. everyone is cheering and i'm crying and smiling and thanking everyone i meet.

when we finally got emily her cage was a wreck and we left it, but brought her. she relieved herself on the tarmac. go emily. we were the last folks out of the airport and took a bus/cab with all of our stuff. the cabbie was really annoyed that we had a dog and used several choice words to explain. so emily ate him.

he drove us to ma'ale adumim to our apartment....

from our apartment if you look off of the mirpeset (terrace) you can see jerusalem which is five miles to the west of us. adam made the point that we're so far east that we have to pray to the west. if you look out of our windows, you can see the controversial E1 police station situation. from about noon until 5pm the heat is intense, but then we get these amazing desert winds that cool everything down to maybe the 60s. the first few nights we were freezing--maybe. these same winds blew little a's new underpants right off of our mirpeset to jordan this afternoon.

our first shabbat we discovered that we'd flooded two of our neighbors by flushing toilet paper down the toilet. so we don't do that anymore, nasty habit that it was. that same shabbos, our air conditioner was accidentally flipped on to heat and we panicked that we broke it. after sweating that afternoon, we realized that it was fine.

at some point in the past two weeks we made it to the kotel (western wall) in the old city. i did (for the first time ever!) actually have kvitlach (a note) to put into the wall. i wrote it on a copy of one of my pictures of my grandparents that my aunt susie gave me. i figured that this way they'd be forever part of israel in some way.

we met westabank mama for pizza. she's amazing and totally amazing. i actually have to call her.

the first week of our life here we were completely clockless. by the middle of our second week, we'd gotten a clock in jerusalem for approximately 12$. it felt great to have a clock! and when we finally procured a fridge (maybe the 2nd day here?) it was awesome. our stuff arrived yesterday, so now we have a stove/oven, and a washer and dryer. but the dryer doesn't fit into the laundry room. thank goodness we have an extra bedroom. two of the kids will share a room and the dryer will have its own room. the baby will continue to sleep with us. of course, having appliances means nothing. we are waiting for someone to come in to install the appliances because we're not supposed to do it ourselves.

more soon, it's after midnight and i'm going to have a small supper of stuffed grape leaves, cigars, chumus and pita. this is my culinary dream come true.

i keep saying that i cannot believe i'm here. but it's more than that. i cannot believe that i don't have to leave in five weeks to go back to the states. thanks nefesh b'nefesh!!!!!!!!