Shavuot, 17th of May and Fun Cousin Times.

Almost a week has passed, and I have taken photos and written blogposts in my head, but none on the blog… We had a lovely Shavuot here in Jerusalem, and we ate plenty of cheesecakes.

And our little gardener even decorated one of the cakes with strawberries from his own “field”!

This year my brother and his family were visiting for the holiday, and they offered to stay with the kids so my husband and I could go out to hear shiurim (teachings) on leil shavuot together. How nice for us! I think it is always a blessing to be out on the streets of Jerusalem on this special night. To walk along and meet plenty of others out there during hours when most of us normally are fast asleep. Most people dressed in white, all wishing each other Chag Sameah, a Happy Holiday. And the views of Jerusalem are just fantastic! The wall around the old city all lit up, it is just beautiful. I am sooo blessed to get to live my life right here!

The children have been so excited to have two of their Norwegian cousins visiting for the last week or so. Here are the two girls matchingly dressed in white for Shavuot:

And of course they had to freshen up a bit before the holiday:

What do you think of their manicure table…?? Hehe…

The two boys are not as close in age, but they sure had a great time together. The little one looking so much up to the older one, and wanting to do everything he did. And the older one totally loving it!

On the day of Shavuot I had the joy of hanging out with these guys, and as we walked to a neighborhood park, we had a perfect view of the mountains of Moab. What a perfect setting to talk about the story from the book of Ruth! – Naomi and Elimelech left with their two sons from Bethlehem right over there, because there was no rain and hardly any food in the land. They walked all the way to over there, to the mountains that you can see right over there. And so on and so on. Again, – I am soooo blessed to get to raise my children in this place!

Guess if the four cousins had a great time having their erev Shavuot meal together all of them together on one bench! Very good times indeed!

And a few days later, Friday, the 17th of May we celebrated the Norwegian independence day together. Us Norwegian Jerusalemites were very happy to have other Norwegians to celebrate with, – and our Shabbat table probably looked a lot different than most other Shabbat tables…

We have had such a great time with our guests! Now they have just left, and we are very much missing them already. But we are thankful for lots and lots of wonderful shared memories.

My brother is exceptionally good with children… And they all know how to take advantage of it…!

Yeay for family!

Biscuit Cake

We are in the Cheese Cake Baking Business over here these days. Shavuot, The Festival of Weeks, starts tomorrow night, and it is traditionally celebrated with a festive dairy meal, – complete with a dessert of yummy cheesecakes. Since many cheesecake get better after a night in the fridge, we made ours today.

I prefer the European cold and unbaked version, while my American better half prefers the New York style baked cheesecake. So I made one of each. We will be about fifteen of us around our holiday table, so it is anyway good to have plenty.

Our princess has been talking about wanting to make “ugat biskvitim”, biscuit cake, for a long time already, and I have always replied, – let’s do that for Shavuot. Of course I have to keep my promise, so tonight was the night, – she got to make her biscuit cake.

deep concentration is always helped by the tongue…

It couldn’t get much easier, really. And I must admit, the cake tastes really good too, – just judging from licking the bowls and such… Here is a quick run through of how you do it. You make a mix of whipped cream, vanilla cream and cream cheese (or a simpler white cheese, like we do in Israel). You dip biscuits in milk to soften them a little bit, and then layer the biscuits and the cream-mixture, starting with biscuits, doing three layers and finishing with cream.

On top most people put grated chocolate, but we happened to have these cute heart shaped thin chocolates, so we decorated with them. (And ideally we should have made it in a square or rectangle pan, but we need that one for the Lasagna we are making tomorrow…)

MMMMmmmmmmm! We LOVE ugat biskvitim!!!

A little gardener…

We are blessed to have a little bit of a garden. It is not big, but by Jerusalem standards it can be called a garden. I am very thankful for this little bit of space where the kids can run and play freely, and we have also had fun with different types of plants and trees.

I grew up on a farm, and my husband grew up eating a lot of homegrown vegetables, but none of us can brag about particularly green thumbs. Still, there is the satisfaction of homegrown local produce, and our little bit of dirt provides an opportunity to at least try that out on a very small level.

Our son has shown an interest in gardening, and has tried out various projects, the last one being strawberries. He earns pocket-money by reading books, and this winter, just before the snow, he spent some of his money buying some strawberry-plants. For months he has been caring for the plants, there were lots of leaves, flowers came and went, but it took a long time for the berries themselves to come around.

The joy was great the other morning, when he picked his first berries, and shared with everyone in the family. What satisfaction! The work brought fruit! I believe little things like these can play central parts in the process called life. 

Yom Yerushalayim.

This is one of my favorite days of the year. Really. This is a VERY special day. It is Jerusalem Day. Yom Yerushalayim. Today we celebrated 46 years since Jerusalem’s reunification. And what a celebration it was!!! The streets of Jerusalem were filled with singing and dancing, joy and laughter! We celebrated God’s faithfulness to His People, His Land and particularly to His city!

my mom and children by flowers planted to spell the name, Jerusalem.

I think I will let the pictures speak for themselves mostly.

It was again a beautiful experience. Spiritual. Building. Uplifting. Strengthening. Encouraging. Unifying. Wonderful, really.

If I forget thee, Yerushalayim…

After having celebrated in the new part of the city of Jerusalem for a few hours, we headed towards the Old City and the Western Wall together with thousands of others. The flags and crowds were like rivers in the streets. The music filled the air completely, and the whole experience was just amazing.

We even got to walk on the walls of Jerusalem for a little bit.

I am very thankful to get to raise my children in Jerusalem. They feel so at home here. Naturally.

And then we ended up at the Kotel, the Western Wall. Beautiful as always.

I was just trying to imagine what it must have been like to see this sight for those who came here 46 years ago, after not being able to access the place for the last 19 years, from 1948 to 1967. How special! And it is still unique today. There is no place like it. And, there is certainly no place like Yerushalayim.

Free IKEA-visit and New Garden-couch.

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog post. Here, anyway. And this is the only blog I have, so the other place I have written blog-posts is in my head. Like, – I was going to write about how much fun one could have without spending any money. Going flower-picking, or rather, picking wild herbs like rosemary or lavender, in our case. Or, going biking, if you already have the bikes, that is. Or just hanging out reading books or playing games. Or going to IKEA.

Fun 2 shekel IKEA ice-creams!

Yes, we did that the other day, when we had errands to do around the country, and one of them was something my husband had to do near IKEA, and the kids and I decided to wait for him in the nicely air-conditioned IKEA for about three hours! Without buying anything at all, other than cheap meals for the kids!! They had a GREAT time! We had so much time at every place, the playroom, the movie-place, the shop itself, the restaurant, – everywhere! The children said, – this is so much fun, it is like we LIVE at IKEA! And then they asked; – Imma, do we have to pay to get into IKEA??? – No, I answered, – normally we have to pay quite a bit to get OUT… hehe…

watching a movie at IKEA, while enjoying the ice-creams. Nice life.

And, what I have looked forward to showing you is this new garden-couch or bench-thing that I made out of our old baby-bed!

I just put it up with only one of the long sides, and the mattress placed high up, painted it white, sewed some new pillow-cases for it, and walla, – I have a whole new look on my terrace!!

It made me SO happy, – and the whole thing was totally free! How satisfying! Reusing everything! (*By the way, if you want to do this yourself, also get some type of strengthening for the seating, because of course, most of us are heavier than babies… I found some pieces of wood that others had thrown away, that I just added on top of the support that was already there, and now it is nice and strong.)

The other night, just as we came home from gymnastics and baseball practice, we got some big drops of rain filled with dust, which equals mud, and we quickly brought our “new” garden furniture inside, and found that this garden couch works very well as a bench at the end of our dining room table too! How convenient!

I even found another good use for the one side-piece of the bed that there was no use for here, but I will show you that in another post. Haven’t painted it white yet. It is such a blessing to be able to renew the look of one’s home by just using what one already has. Really makes me happy!

To be. To be alive. How wonderful!

Summer has most definitely arrived in Israel, and we enjoy beautiful candle-lit evenings outside. Like, right now, I sit here on my new garden-couch. Candles and wine on the table in front of me. Nice Life.

Yom Ha Atzmaut.

We have had a great day celebrating the birthday of our young state here, 3000 years old, and 65 years young! This ancient land has a new and thriving state built and being built, – and we get to be a part of it!!!

Last night we were downtown Jerusalem along with thousands of others, dressed in Israeli flags carrying huge plastic blow-up hammers, celebrating our country! It was Yom ha Atzmaut! Independence Day! There was music, there was dancing, there was immense JOY!!! And there was this incredible feeling of togetherness! We had just come out of a difficult day of painful memories, and now we were ready to celebrate what these guys had died for, what we get to live for!

And today we got up early to drive out and get in line to visit an army base that was open to the public for the occasion. This was not just any open army base for us, it was the army base that a great friend of ours serves on. The children were excited to see one of “her” planes, and here they got to pose together with her in front of her F-15!

We had a wonderful time walking around learning about the various airplanes of our Air-Force.

And of course watching some of them fly above us was a thrilling experience! Here are some huge helicopters, Sikorskys, that we got to see a couple of times in the air.

Driving around today, there were lots of cars decorated with flags. And even though we were in really large traffic-jams, it didn’t stress us out, – because this was all just lots of great zionists being out and about celebrating our country, – what could be more wonderful than that??

Having shown you our decorated car from the front, I have to also show it to you from the back, as there is something there that I still haven’t shown you…

… yes, it’s my marathon club sticker. I choose to show it today, because my heart, my thoughts and my prayers have also been in Boston today. The whole thing is just so unbelievable! All we can do is sigh to God, pray for healing for the injured, comfort for the families who lost their loved ones. My son who is in third grade, prayed in tears for the class of third graders who will not get their friend back to their class, as he was killed in the bombing of the Boston Marathon yesterday.

On our way back up to Jerusalem, we again saw the ruins of the vehicles that were used in the attempt to bring supplies into the sieged Jerusalem just  before the establishment of the state. Now they were decorated with flags, honoring all those who lost their lives trying to help the people in Jerusalem.

Oh, how these things are interconnected. Death. Life. Some died so that others could live. Those of us who are blessed to get to live, – may we live life to the fullest! May our lives be used as positive building blocks! May we keep on building our country!

Remembering together.

Today our flag is on half mast.

These are such emotional days. Over breakfast today we all shared stories of people we remember on this day, Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and terror-victims. It really touched my heart to see the tears on the young cheeks of my children, deeply saddened by stories of people who so tragically had lost their lives in the fight for our country.

At school they had talked about a girl who had studied there, who later, on the same day as she started 8th grade, had happened to stand next to a terrorist with a bomb strapped to himself, and blew up with him and everyone around her. Then there was the woman who stood on a bus stop not far from their school, and a terrorist came and put a knife into her heart.

memorial wall at school

Abba told stories of people who he had served together with in the army. The guy in the bunk-bed below him, a father of several children, who was shot down and killed on the spot. The guy he had served with for many years, who had a young son and a pregnant wife at home, when he one foggy morning was killed defending our country.

I remember that morning very well. We had been married for four years. No children yet. My husband was in the army for reserve duty, I was home alone. Still in bed, I received a very quick phone call from my dear one in uniform. He just wanted to let me know something had happened on his base, I would hear about it on the news, he could not give any details, but wanted to let me know he was OK. That was it. I remember waiting for the 6.30 news on the radio, where we heard that one of our bases by Gaza had been attacked, and that some of our soldiers had been hit. I sure was glad I had heard from my soldier that morning, but my heart was already aching for those who would never hear from theirs again.

That morning four of our soldiers were injured and four were killed. I visited one of the injured ones at a hospital in Jerusalem. He was a lone soldier, a basketball-player, he had been shot three times in the knee. That was the end of his basket-ball career.

Later, after my husband was back from army duty, we went together to a memorial for his friend that he had served with for a long time. His little son was so cute. The whole story was so sad. This summer it will be ten years ago, and there will be another special memorial service.

Today we all remember the ones we were close to. Our neighbor remembers his brother, who was shot down by an arab who worked for him. Each one has his own special ones that he remembers. At the same time, we remember together. We are in this together. This sorrow, this remembrance, the fight for our country, the defense of our country, the building of our country. The remembering is a central part of our identity, of who we are.

There are ceremonies all over the country today. In cemeteries, at schools, it seems all of us somehow are part of it. We stood in silence at 11 o’clock when the siren sounded all over our country. People who were out driving or on the street, stopped in their tracks. We were at the school, and stood there together as the opening part of a very moving ceremony. We listened to songs and poems, remembered each of those who had gone to that school and later been killed in a war of terror-attacks. We cried together. Prayed together. Remembered together. Remembered those who are the silver platter on which our Jewish state is served to us…

Tonight, after 24 hours of intense remembering and honoring of those who have given their lives for our country, we will move on to celebrate our independence, our freedom, our country. This year we are celebrating the 65th birthday of the modern state of Israel. This is a fact that every preschooler in this country knows. Ask a Norwegian or an American five year old how old their state is, – would they be able to tell you? Maybe, maybe not. Israelis know.