the house process is rolling.

We are actually meeting with the house people to write up exactly what the story is. Then we can do a contract. We are also approved for a mortgage. This is very exciting for me on 2 levels.

One, I am ready to move back into my own home. The place we are looking at is gorgeous, well built, has built in closets (not something you often find in Israel) with a huge lawn, not huge compared to a large American lawn, but compared to most of the places around here and filled with fruit trees. We will restart our vegetable garden as well and probably plant a couple new trees. I want a cheery tree. My girls want a tree house, though I don't know if I can plant a tree that size for her. We'll see.

Two, we are becoming more permanently settled in Israel with this move. We're pretty much settled now, we found a great community, have friends, the kids are fully adjusted and I have a good job with a future. Owning land in Israel is a dream come true, keeping all the mitzvos that you can only keep here will be much more actualized when we pick fruits off our trees.

Last week, friday afternoon, we went to a U Pick orchard about 20 minutes away and picked mostly raspberries, and some avacodo and a couple cheeries. We got home and my wife, God Bless Her, immediately made a fresh raspberry pie covered in chocolate. We also bought raspberry liquor that they made there to try. Shabbos came and we realized that we had not taken truma or maaser from the raspberries, so the pie just sat there until the end of shabbos when we took off the truma and maaser, and decided to save it for shavuos, which was the next day.
It was a delicious pie.