The intrepid travelers return home

We're back from the (not all that) frozen north, and we had a great time. The weather turned out to be beautiful despite the dire forecasts and we were able to get outside and actually enjoy ourselves.

We arrived at the cabins on Friday afternoon to discover that two of Itai's friends were in the cabins right next door to ours, and before you knew it a pint-sized (albeit not all that successful LOL) basketball team was formed, so that got the weekend started off nicely. The next day we visited the Hula Nature Reserve which just put in a FANTASTIC new visitors center featuring a 3D movie with special effects so cool that the adults enjoyed it as much as the children. You haven't lived until you've been beamed in the face by a virtual fish LOL. After a relaxing afternoon drinking wine and hot chocolate and eating oranges straight from the tree Itai and I went swimming and jacuzzi-ing at a nearby indoor pool while Maya napped.

The highlight of the weekend was yesterday's trip to Mt. Hermon . It was a weekday so not that crowded, and the weather couldn't have been better - strikingly blue skies and WARM. We started out all bundled up and ended up peeling off layer after layer. We didn't ski, but the kids had a great time sledding. Well, except for Maya's first (and only) solo run. Itai had come to a stop automatically at the bottom of the sledding hill, so Jay figured it was banked and sent Maya down alone - where she promptly flew straight to the bottom and UNDER the inflated barrier at the end and ended up stuck underneath. He had to race down the hill to rescue her. Thankfully she's a pretty tough kid and wasn't scarred for life, but it did take about another half an hour to get her back on a sled, and this time obviously with a grownup! After sledding it was off to a local kibbutz to see how honey is made, and then to another kibbutz to visit friends before finally coming home last night.