A Belated Purim Update

I can't even blame it on the time it takes to develop the Purim pictures... It's all digital these days, so we had them right away. Still, it's almost two weeks later, and here I am blogging about our Purim experiences. I did make a mid-year resolution to try and update this blog more often. We feel it's good for us to put a little record of our daily lives in writing. Sharing it is an added bonus, since it's nice to get those comments and responses from people all over the world. So, there, I intend on going for at least weekly posts from now on. Who knows, might get more often than that too ;)

This one is just a recap of Purim, really. We had two super-heros here at home, Mr Incredible (Dan) and Spiderman, no less. Our kids visit a Waldorf kindergarten (a-la Steiner), and we were asked to avoid "scary" costumes. They asked for flowers, fairies, animals and such, but this being Purim, they ended up having two spidermans, a cowboy and almost a Mr Incredible too. The almost Mr Incredible was our Dan, who was down with a fever just in time for Purim. He even got to the point of wearing his costume in the morning, we thought we'd take him to see the other kids in costumes then back home, but he felt so lousy, he actually asked to get out of the costume and stay at home... So, here are one Mr Increidble, just before he went back to bed, and a couple of Spidermen, the taller one is Ron -



That was on Friday. Sunday, Dan was feeling only a little bit better (he's perfectly ok now, btw, it was just one of those bugs, just a fever, essentially for 4-5 days, then some coughing and a runny nose), so we decided to join my mom and take a walk in Netanya. They have a nice shopping street there, with no cars and they were having a carnival of sorts held. Now, Netanya is famous for many things in Israel, among them as being a favorite destination for suicide bombers. Going there for a heavily crowded event is always a bit scary... but you go anyway, so we went anyway :p

They actually closed the area and had fairly tight security arrangements, allowing people in only through checkpoints. Here's the one we got in through -



It's not easy checking a huge crowd where all kids and quite a few adults come in dressed up. The place itself had lots of cops, paramedics and even people who were marked as "Security Observers", most likely volunteers, they looked about hi-school age, just standing there and keeping watch for anything or anyone suspicious. We sat down for some ice cream and I just had to take a picture of the nice gathering in front of us -


I have to say, I don't actually think there's anything uniquely Israeli about that. I am sure any European city with a similar gathering would have security forces all over the place. It was just something I noted as being different from when I was a kid. Back then security wasn't as tight, but then again, terrorists didn't use to blow themselves up in the middle of busy crowds back then.

Anyway, the whole thing was really nice. Lots and lots of kids in costumes, my own kids included, with everyone going ooooo and aaaaaah over other people's costumes lol. Here's a nice family we met on the way, where the adults and all of the kids all dressed up -



I'll finish with those. I'll probably post again rather sooner than later, with some fun pics from our recent amusement park adventure!