Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Back to Posting!

Finally, my summer hiatus is over :D

Yes, I did take longer than I said I would, but my husband says I'm excellent at finding excuses, so here's mine. We had the holidays here, right after the summer vacation. By holidays, I mean Rosh Hashana (New Year's) followed closely by Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and Sukkot (No idea if it has a name in English, but it's one long holiday with 8 days off school for the kids!).

I took a few more weeks to bounce back into normal life, get my work projects in order and so on, and here I am, back to posting!

Not even sure where to pick it up... One thing I should say right ahead, I pretty much distanced myself from most things political. I hardly keep track of the news these days, and I definitely stay away from political boards. Not even sure why, I think I OD'ed on politics last year, and maybe I need a break.

I think I'll make this post with lots of pictures, really, just show what life here looks like these days and mention some of our activities. Let's start with the two in-house rascals, Ron and Dan.

They both started new kindergartens this year. Ron is at the kindergarten which belongs to the democratic school in Pardes Hana. A new school, set up this year, promoting the values of democracy in theory and in practice. I'll elaborate about it in some future post. Dan, the younger fella, is at a local Hari Krishna kindergarten. Yes, that's the Indian sect. There is a group of Israeli Hari Krishna followers living not too far from our town and they set up a kindergarten in a nearby kibbutz. They don't preach or teach their religion or philosophy there. They simply provide a wonderful kindergarten, peaceful and loving, where the kids practice yoga as well as play. Dan absolutely loves the place, and so do we!

As you can see in this picture, they're both very cheerful and happy to model their new Superman shirts and respective Batman and Spiderman shoes. We have reached the age of Super Heros, so Superman, Batman and Spiderman are practically family members these days.

As for DH and me, we're doing well and focusing on promoting the home business and working out. Working out is a huge theme in our lives these days. I've taken up running and am doing a good job with it. I started from being able to run maybe 200 meters and am now at just over 3 kilometers, working my way up to 5km! I also lost quite a bit of weight, about 15kg (just over 30lbs), in the past 4-5 months. I won't say I'm slim yet, but I'm definitely much much more fit. We've also started what we hope will turn into a new tradition of weekend hikes. Last Friday we went to a nearby nature reserve. There and back, it was a good 15km hike, and we didn't take it too slowly either. Net walking time must have been around 3 hours. It was lots of fun though! So, here's a couple of pictures from that trip -


That's it for now, hope to be posting more regularly from now on. Thanks to all of those who stuck around!