more of the past months

Purim is a holiday of costumes and sillyness. Since my kids go to a Waldorf kindergarten, some order and seriousness have to remain in place.. each group has a theme and the children have to think of costumes that would fit within the theme. It is actually not such a bad idea, seeing how children in other schools and kindergartens go for the ready bought superhero or TV characters costumes, whereas in our community a bought costume was a rare sight and we avoided all the ben10s and bakugans and the rest. In Hilel's group the theme was "sea world" and he, after a year of planning on being a mamuth this year, shifted immediately to the idea of a killer whale. funny enough in his 3 years of kindergarten Purim celebrations he was already a squid

and a swordfish

and he only got out of the water once to be a monkey.

here he is this year, with Amalia.

Her group's theme was "circus", and she found the loveliest reference for an acrobat in our Pippi longstocking book, with the wonderful drawings by Ingrid Vang Nyman. She just had to add some plastic bits, the crown and a butterfly shaped key holder as a ring, and her fairy neckless.

It was a rainy Purim and we stayed mostly at home and made some masks together.

On fine, sunny winter days I try to take the kids out as much as possible. I pick them up from their kindergarten with some fruits and snacks packed along with my knitting, and we go to a playground. these are from February first:

and now that it became more spring like we had some really warm days, and started going to the small stream near Amikam, not far from here, usually with more friends. For these outings I add an empty plastic box, to collect tadpoles and then release them again when we're about to leave.

and this happened in our back yard, while I was hanging the laundry:

what a monster. They have been living in our yard since before we moved in, in a beautiful co-existance with a pretty big pack of eternally hungry street cats that wander through. A few months ago we found a tiny little turtle, I suppose there's a chance of that happening again sometime soon.

cheesyness

Last week we celebrated Shavuot, my favorite Holiday that is all about the first harvest of the spring and, for some reason, about cheese eating. It seems that in all the kindergartens the kids did the same thing this year: making Labane balls. My son brought them back from his kindergarten along with some bread they baked, and we ate it together and it was so nice that I asked his teacher for the recipe and we did it again today with our good friends from the north that were visiting. Labane is made by placing yoghurt in a sieve that's covered in thin cloth and letting it drain most of its liquid overnight. in this recipe I added about 1 teaspoon salt and the juice of half a lemon to each liter of yoghurt. after the Labane was ready, I gave the kids plates with Zaatar, flax seeds and turmeric (didn't have sweet paprika powder for the red color ones, sadly), jars, olive oil and some rosemary and zaatar branches from the garden. They rolled little balls of labane in the different spices and drowned them in olive oil and herbs. in 2 days they'll be ready.

working hard:

labane and turmeric mixed together into a funny colored paste:

slowly it became less and less appealing...

that's what the table looked like when they were done:

but all for a good cause:

let's hope it tastes nice.

Birthday Picnic

Amalia turned 3, unbelievable as it may seem to us and to anyone that knows her.

We organized a little picnic for our friends in an oak forest nearby. Simple and quickly made food (humous, pitas and some salads along with nuts, crackers, strawberries and a chocolate cake) and very few plans - I thought of a treasure hunt for the kids, where the treasure would be a big bag of papers, scissors, paint and glue, but eventually it wasn't necessary. they ran up and down the hills and into the "flour cave" which was a soft limestone wall where they could get really dirty, put on the costumes I brought with us, and finally did get into some origami and paper cut outs, making airplanes and flying them. I love watching a group of children play, when they all get along and just so creatively and freely dive in and out of games. I love it when there are smaller and bigger kids and still they manage to play together. I love how they exist in their world, right next to us yet so far away in their stories.

*they're all somehow taken from the back... I'm so aware of some friends not wanting their children to appear on the internet, that I got used to taking pictures from behind.

Amalia is the one wearing the white princess costume. The monkey is Hilel.

7 AM

I'm taking our dog for her morning walk at about 7 AM. last night we changed our time to summer clock, and so in fact today it was at 6 AM. 6 AM!! outside! no coffee!!! At least I managed to not forget my camera.

that's our yard. We have to move away soon, I'll be missing it. Even though we haven't managed to take good care of it.

At the end of our street there are fields and a quarry.

So much of what grows wild at the edges of the fields is edible. wild fennel, oats, mustard and some who's names I don't know in English and probably more that I don't even know about. Here's some yummy, sweet smelling fennel and some oats:

The wheat is still green, it's just the sun and dew drops that make it look ripe.

I hope these images will keep my mood up for the coming week. My partner is going to China for the whole week, I'm having a cold and generally I'm on low energy. I wish I could snap my fingers just like Mary Poppins and have this week over with.

spring time

It's only february but it feels like spring already... There aren't many reasons to be happy living in Israel these days. Politically we're going for a disaster, there's no water and there were almost no rains this winter, rent prices aren't dropping enough and the school system is terrifying for parents of a 5 year old. But at least we can enjoy sunny days like today, when every bug is crawling out and every bird is out singing and the air is full of humming and buzzing and the flowers are all blooming in pink and yellow and red and purple...

I made some corn and banana muffins with the kids (so helpful; near nervous breakdown) and we took them for a picnic in the nearby Ramat Hanadiv park.

Hilel was wearing a pair of very warm flannel pants that I finished last night - still there are some adjustments to be made to the pattern - the crotch is too low and there's something wrong with the pockets.

I'm tired... another episode of "the century of self" and off to bed.

peter and the wolf - a beautiful animated version, a bit grim and spooky. the ending is different from the original story, a more humane solution.

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