Momstitute- Substitute Mom / Party Aunt

 

Here are some photos from a very fun week! 

Day 1- these kids love fruit and will eat it with any meal!

Beach Day!  I was still tired this day, but I found the strength to drive safely there and back, an hour each way, and by the afternoon I even walked along the edge of the water for 20 minutes or so.  Definitely on the mend and feeling grateful!  Lunch was pita sandwiches with peanut butter and bananas.  And I think we had ice cream every day this week. Sometimes twice!

Day 2

In-Center Friend Day!  These gals made two batches of croissants!  The friend brought the dough already made, which was an all day process!  The apartment smelled amazing!  Lunch was pizza with store bought dough, which looked and tasted like tortillas.  Not amazing.    We played a new game called In The Bag, which is like Taboo, Password, and Charades.  Fun!

The youth activity was a read a thon with snacks.  Lots of snacks.  Not lots of reading, but here's a picture where we are mostly pretending.

The group in Greece went to a church in Philippi commemorating Lydia, the first convert to Christianity in Europe.  She was in the business of selling purple-dyed cloth, so Frank sent me a picture of these friends wearing purple in Lydia's honor.  See Acts 16.  Purple was my favorite color when I was a kid.  I made some purple pendants from bakeable clay to share with some Lydia fans.

We got to talk to Isabella Properzi who is serving in the Italy Rome Mission, Spanish Speaking.  She is stationed in Malta right now.  

We cared for a neighbor's plants.  Jennifer Bertin has quite the green thumb!

Day 3 Cave Day!  Lunch was peanut butter banana pitas again!

Here is the entrance to the cave.  It was an hour drive for a 30-minute cave, and that's including the video.  But worth it!  We got there just ahead of an Israeli school group, so the teens were surrounded by little people practicing their English.  "What's your name?  Where are you from?" It was adorable but also difficult to extract ourselves from their friendliness.

Very cool cave.  Moist inside.

We played Sky-Jo with the Bendheims.  And ate ice cream for the second time that day.  

Day 4:  Suspension Bridge Day.  We invited friends from the branch and had a blast!

We hiked from Liberty Bell park past St. Andrew's church, down the Hinnom Valley, across the new suspension bridge, through the Valley Farm, and back up to Montefiore's windmill. 

Kristian was really sweet with this little 5-year old.  They were inseparable and matched each other's curiosity and energy.

Photo shoot in Yemin Moshe, one of the earliest neighborhoods built outside the walls of the Old city in the late 1800s.  It is a favorite spot for photographers. 

This was the point of the day where I started wondering in which pocket I had put my American phone...  I chose pants that have shallow pockets that day, and I usually try to put my phone in my coat pockets instead, but I had this nagging suspicion that I hadn't seen my iphone for a while...

Behind King David Hotel, the rolling stone tomb.  Five-year old added for scale.

Montefiore's Windmill.

Aslan!

Art in the park- a monumental face in profile.  This fits Julia's confident, upward looking personality.

By the time we returned to the parking lot, I was clearly missing my phone.  I still had my Jerusalem phone, so I could function, but my U.S. phone had not been connected to service and was being used as a camera or for wifi calling.  So I couldn't use find my phone to reach it.  

I took the teens home (after we stopped for ice cream, turning into a pattern here).  Once they were settled, I drove back to West Jerusalem and RETRACED MY STEPS!  LOOKING FOR MY PHONE!  All those placed in the photos above?  Did 'em again.  The sun was sinking, so I hustled across the suspension bridge, through the farm, left my phone number just in case the other phone was found, through the valley where we ate PB&B pitas, back to St. Andrews, back through Yemin Moshe, back to the rolling stone tomb, which by this time was looking a little creepy, past the lion and the face sculpture, past the windmill, where I saw not one but TWO "Will You Marry Me" backdrops ready for that special moment.  Then back to Liberty Bell Park.  

It's hard to see on this sign, but in the bottom yellow box, it says, first 2 hours free parking.  That is not true.  A parking attendant was ticketing cars as I was parking, and I asked him if there were 2 hours free, and he said no.  I said, then maybe it should not say that on the sign.  He nodded pleasantly but what could he do?  

So I started the day with two phones and ended with only one.  Sad.  I lost my driver's license and a debit card (which I paused right away).  But luckily I had recently upgraded Google Photos storage, so all the photos were safely in the cloud.  But it was still sad.  A hard lesson was learned.  Don't trust shallow pockets.  

Zoo Day  

Noemi is giving a little extra love to this picked-on bird.

There were three families along on this excursion, which was fun.  Kristian again hung out with the 5-year old and they kept each other occupied.  The other teens had someone to hang out with, so the moms could chat.  

The other special guest this day was Raghad, well actually she was our hostess--her brother works at the zoo and she knows it like the back of her hand.  If it hadn't been for Raghad offering some discount tickets, we wouldn't have ventured into the aquarium after the zoo.  And we would have missed some spectacular animals.

So much fun to hang out with these ladies!

This statue was a perfect fatherly metaphor for how kindly Kristian cared for his little friend today.  He'll be a great dad someday!

The butterfly encouter was amazing!  We spent maybe an hour there, and everyone loved it!  The green sweater was the first one to attract butterflies to land on it.

Almost everyone got at least one butterfly landing, even Clarisse, who  didn't particularly like the idea.

But the little 5-year old was waiting and waiting for a butterfly to land on him.  His little boy wiggles were keeping them at bay, and he was getting more and more desperate.  Finally, the teen with the green hoodie kindly offered it to the 5-year old, and his mom helped him calm down and be still, and when a butterfly flew close she snapped a picture as proof and we called it a victory.  It was sweet the way all the teens waited patiently with the 5-year old so that his wish could come true.   

I love this woman!

Watching the Properzi kids reminds me of the many times my siblings and I stayed at friends' houses while my mom went to girls camp.  This happened almost every year until I turned 12 and could go myself.  One year we stayed with Maude Alvord, and she made us Swedish pancakes, which are like crepes.  But she is Swedish, so I'll defer to her naming conventions.  Coincidentally, her son Pete lives in the branch here, so I asked him for her recipe and made it for the Properzis. 

The Properzis have a tradition of eat their crepes and pancakes not just with fruit, syrup, whipped cream, and other sweet things, but also with lemon juice.  I tried it, and it really brought out the flavor of the strawberries.  Interesting and yummy!

Barber shop open for business!  

Stripe day!

Making apple pies with Properzis is a tradition that goes way back.  

Noemi kept this plant alive all week!

After a week of playing, school started up again and the fun photos trickled off.  There was laundry to be done and the real world to be re-entered.  But also my sweetie returned from Greece!  We were together again, but not for long...