It's official

We have had our last Sabbath in Jerusalem - for now, anyway.

Jackson running to nursery in the Jerusalem Center.  He has loved his time in nursery here.

My mind needs a resting spot

I feel like my thoughts are all over the board right now.

First of all, Happy Father's Day to all the fathers in my life.... Tom, Dad Balderree, Dad Sowards, Grandpa Sowards, and Popper.  You guys all mean the world to me and I am so grateful for such good examples in my life.

People keep asking whether I am sad or excited to leave Israel.  Well, it depends on the moment, to be honest.  I feel very busy with cleaning and packing right now.  Tom has been calling me Cinderella.  I really hope it all gets done in time.  

I am really going to miss all my friends here.  My good friend, April, insisted on watching the kids yesterday so Tom and I could go to Bethlehem together (Tom had never been!).  Our good friend, Sahar, has always been generous to show people around Bethlehem, and yesterday was no exception.  Even as we stood in a long stinky line at the checkpoint to go home, she insisted on waiting with us.  Her adorable mom cooked us an amazing lunch, even though it was her birthday.  One of my other friends who lives in the West Bank, Carolyn, sent me the sweetest email today wishing us well.  I hate that the busy-ness of life, and a big cement wall kept me from seeing her more.  Two good friends, Wendy and Beth, just had baby girls and I am so happy for them, but wish I was going to be near them longer to help them out.  They have both been so good to me.  Analyn is pregnant but we'll be many states apart by the time she has her baby.  Erika served in the Primary presidency with me and made me meals when my back went out.  Four other friends, Brooke, Alexandra, Melyn, and Judith are already gone and are currently in Italy, Chicago, D.C., and Germany.  I miss them already.

The list goes on and on.  I have good friends whose husbands work for the State Department, some are wives of professors at the BYU-J Center, and then there are the service couples.  They have all meant the world to me.  Truly.  They have each made my time here so much more meaningful.  I feel like I could write a book just talking about the great relationships that I have made here.

But as I was doing one of my last grocery shopping trips today (walking to and from the store in 90-degree weather), I couldn't help but be excited to not spend 2 dollars on roughly 1 cup of cottage cheese, or 10 dollars for a pound of beef.  My days of spending close to 2 dollars on one cube of butter are almost over.

As I did my makeup this morning I thought about how nice it will be to restock my dwindling makeup supply when I get home, but this time I'll walk out of WalMart after spending maybe 30 bucks, instead of walking out of a pharmacy spending 100 bucks.

We're going to sit on couches, lay on the carpet, and walk on the grass when we get home.  I'm going to hug my siblings (and siblings-in-law), play with their kids, and try not to steal Kristin and Tara's cute babies from them.

I'm going to go on a date with my husband.  Enjoy air conditioning.  Drive a car.

See?  I need a nice big branch for my thoughts to land on and stay a while.

I'm tired.

Oh, the wonders!

Today Joni was mourning, once again, the loss of a doll that her grandma tried to send to her last year that got lost in the mail.  I couldn't handle the tears for one more second, so I made her a promise.

I told her that for her birthday in October, we'll go get her a new doll and she can pick it out herself.

She was worried they wouldn't have the right doll.  So I explained to her that there are these stores called Target and WalMart that have a whole aisle of dolls.

She couldn't believe it.

I went on to explain that these stores are unlike anything she has seen here in Israel.  You can get anything you want.  You just get in the car (yay!) and drive for a few minutes, and then you're there.  The best part is that you can get anything you need.

Joni:  But, can you get cooking stuff, like food?

Me:  Yes.

Joni:  Can you get dishes??? *eyes getting wider*

Me:  Yes.

Joni:  Can you buy makeup there?!?

Me:  Yes.

Joni:  WHAT. THE. HECK.

To Whom It May Concern:

Dear man at the park: I appreciate you saying "shalom" to Jackson, but I don't appreciate you blowing your cigarette smoke directly in his face and making him gag.

Dear college students: I'd rather you save your 10 F-words for AFTER my children are not around, if it's all the same to you.

Dear other college students: throwing your empty beer bottles against the wall next to the playground scared the livin' daylights out of my kid.

Dear taxi driver: WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING.  You came within INCHES of running over my 2 year old today because you were checking out a girl.  NOT OKAY.  I'm sure you figured as much when I screamed at you.  I also thought some obscenities in my head, but I figure that's better than half the neighborhood hearing it.

Dear guy at the meat counter:  I know it's the Israeli way, but I still think it's rude when you sit and chat on the phone for five minutes while I'm standing there waiting for you to hand me some chicken.  If we spoke the same language I would teach you about a little concept called customer service.

Dear cashier at the grocery store: you have been my favorite for a long time, but today sealed the deal.  When you told me to move the cart that was abandoned in line in front of me, I wanted to hug you.  When you then took their bag of onions and cucumbers out of their cart and rang it through with mine so I would qualify to get the daily deal on produce, I wanted to kiss you.

Dear owner of the abandoned grocery cart:  I'm sorry you had to go back and re-bag your produce, but maybe next time you could finish your shopping BEFORE you get in line!  (Crazy thought, I know.)

Dear flowers outside my apartment: you were the prettiest part of my outing today.  Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Almost two years?

Wow.

We have now been here almost two years, and we have a mere three weeks left.

Today I was thinking that some of the things I will miss the most, are some of the things that took the most getting used to.

For example, it takes forever to get anywhere, and always requires walking.  Today I had two errands to run: buy cantaloupe, and pick up Joni from school.  So Jackson and I set out at noon, which is usually his nap time but I have to keep him up some days because Tom is unable to pick up Joni.

We walked to our favorite produce market, then over to pick up Joni, and came home - it was an hour of walking in the blazing hot sun.

I enjoyed it, even though I was carrying three large cantaloupes and holding sweaty little hands.

It's so easy to be lazy when you have a car.  I'm hoping that wherever we end up living in Austin we are close enough to stores and/or parks that we can walk.  

Superman returns

Remember Superman Frank I talked about in this post?  Well, he was back today.

It was war.

I found the nasty cockroach casually crawling around on the wall above my kitchen sink.  Of all the nerve.  Most roaches seem to stay in the dark, but not this guy.  Maybe because he's so big he thinks he can take me.

Moments like this always make me think of how Tom used to give me a hard time about killing bugs when we were first married.  He would joke that I was going to have to answer to every one of the crawly creatures when I get to heaven.

But when it comes to roaches, I think it's a different story.  There is NO WAY there will be cockroaches in heaven.  And what if I don't go to heaven for killing so many bugs?  Well, so be it.

On with the story....

Jackson and I stood on the other side of the kitchen watching the nasty little big bug crawl all over the place.  As I stood and watched him, I was trying to get up the nerve to kill him.  But I know what a "splat" they can make, and I just didn't know if I could muster up the courage.

I decided I would count to five and just do it.  So I counted to five.... over and over and over, chickening out every time.

Finally, when I knew I couldn't miss, I did it!  But I only got the back half.

Nice.

He ran away, leaving a TRAIL OF GUTS behind him on my counter.  No joke.

So I tried again, but this time it made more guts SPLAT against the wall behind the counter.

Are you grossed out enough yet?

Even after two guts splats, he ran and hid underneath our wooden knife holder thingy.

Coward.

So after IM-ing Tom about the whole thing, I decided I'd go check to make sure "Superman Frank" was still there.  To my horror, an army of ants had suddenly attacked my counter, and they were

EATING. THE. ROACH. GUTS.

*shudder*

My own story is making me sick as I write it.  I won't be offended if you stop reading.

By now it was time to go get Joni from school and I knew I had to make one last attempt to either kill or capture.  So after counting to five again... oh.... 10 different times, I heroically knocked over the wooden knife holder thingy and as the maimed roach tried to get away with the two legs he had left, I threw a bowl down on top of him, and then put several of Tom's expensive language dictionaries to good use.

I put them on top of the bowl so there was NO FREAKING WAY he was getting out this time.

He's still there as I write this, several hours later.  I injured him enough that he's probably dead by now.  And if he's not, I'm hiring a hit man tonight (a.k.a. Tom) to take care of him.

See you in hell, Mr. Roach.

Western Wall Tunnel Tour

I won't be able to do this justice, but here it goes...

The famous Western Wall that I've shown pictures of several times is a part of the retaining wall for the Temple Mount that Herod built.  But it's only a very, very small portion of it.  I'm talkin' teeny tiny.  Most of the wall is hidden underground and behind private residences.

So in recent years, there has been a lot of excavating to reveal more of the wall and some of the things surrounding it.  Just one year ago they found an ancient mikvah (ritual bath) that dates back to Christ's time.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get a picture of it because you can only see it from a distance through a window in the ground.  And they are discovering new things all the time.

You can take a tour underground to see much, much more of the wall.  First, you see a series of arches that held up a bridge 2000 years ago.  The bridge led right up to one of the entrances to the Temple Mount.  These pictures don't even begin to show how interesting and beautiful they are....

Here we are walking along side the wall.  The stones on this level were ENORMOUS, usually weighing somewhere between two and eight tons each.  There is even one that is 42 feet long and weighs 570 tons, if you can wrap your mind around that.  When the tour guide told us that, she said, "Now I'm sure your next question will be how they got it here.  The answer is, we don't know."

A model of what the Temple Mount would have looked like 2000 years ago.  The tall white part in the middle would have housed the Holy of Holies, and that white structure would have been TWICE the height of the structure that currently stands in that same place now, the Dome of the Rock.  The little yellow box that I drew in shows the small portion of the wall that we can see today.

A part of the wall that is the closest that women can currently get to where the Holy of Holies was (aside from being up on the Temple Mount itself, and I'm not sure they're even allowed to go there - they certainly would not be allowed to pray there).

At the very end of the wall they have uncovered the ground that would have existed 2000 years ago.  Scholars disagree on what this area would have been used for, but many believe it would have been a market place.

Also at the end of the wall we walked through a HUGE ancient aqueduct.  It was impressive.  Our tour guide said that we don't even know how old it is.  Then at the end of the aqueduct you come to the moat that Herod built around one of the northern corners of the Temple Mount.  We were able to see a portion of the moat, but I didn't get any good pictures of it.

The Tunnel Tour was pretty amazing, and it was something I hadn't gotten around to doing before Mom and Becky came.  We did this on their last day here.  Their entire stay was so fun for us.  I'm so grateful that I got to show them the sites here, and also what our day to day life is like.

Hopefully we'll be back someday and we can show more of our family members around the Holy Land!