something magical about jerusalem

We got home last night at about 12:30 and I made it up for work today with no problems. I have found that since I've started swimming I am able to deal with a lot less sleep, much to the dismay of my dear wife.

It's always nice and exciting heading down to Jerusalem. Even though we chose to live very far away (for very good reasons), the feeling that I have when I'm there was a large factor in my desire to make aliyah. We started off the trip in RBS to visit the in-laws. We went to the Grill Burger instead of the Burgers Bar because it was closer and we didn't have a carseat for my niece so the women wanted to minimize the amount of time in the car. (Kudos to rafi and mike for the recommendations) The food was good, I had the kids chicken and hot dogs as well as a burger, fries and chicken wings. The wings were the best part, and I highly recommend them. The burger wasn't great but I've had much worse. After dinner my wife found a friend a chatted for a while and then there was a GAP/Old Navy sale in some woman's apartment, (yes in RBS) so the women headed off to fight the crowds.

We finally left RBS and hit the 38 and I turned left and my wife, God Bless her, told me I turned the wrong way. I explained to her that we were going to take the back roads to Jerusalem because it was quicker. She didn't like that I dea but I explained that I made an executive decision and there was no veto. As we were driving I decided to call someone just to make sure I was on the right road because I had never gone that way before. Thankfully, Muqata was home and he told me I had just missed the turnoff. Since we were going through the settlements for a little bit, I asked him who I call if rocks get thrown at me. He said he would look up the number and I told him it wasn't that important because I have a red button in my car and if I push the button then helicoptors come and shoot the other guys. He was pretty impressed that I had one of those and wanted to know where I got it. After we discussed it for awhile he laughed and said he didn't think it was the real thing. So he gave me the army's phone number. Now I have to get my red button tested to find out what it really does. I don't want to push it just in case the helicoptors knowck off one of my neighbors by mistake, but I'd hate to try it when I need it and hear a laughing sound.

Anyways, we made it to jlem pretty quickly (much much quicker then if we had taken the 1), especially as we were staying in katamon which is where the back roads let you off. We picked up my sister who had just started eating because she didn't believe we would make it that fast and she took us to the itty bitty apartment that we were going to stay in. I've actually seen smaller apartments before so I'll change this one to a "small" apartment. It was already late, so the kids fell asleep relatively quickly though one of them kept yelling that he wanted to go home.
In the morning we went to the wall for an intense prayer session. I took number 3 with me and my wife got the others. He found all the aleph bet on the page of the siddur that I opened it up to and was very impressed with himself.

We left the wall in front of the temple mount and decided to do something temply. On the case of the big menora in the cardo it said where the mueseum with the new vessels of the temple are on display. There's an organization that is making them according to specification so that when Mashiach comes to rebuild the bais hamikdash we will already have everything ready. It was a very cool place and they gave us a booklet with descriptions of what we were looking at. We probably spent an hour or so in there.

We then headed off to the biblical zoo and met my friend and his family there. The kids got along very well, which is nice. My friend is raising his kids chareidi and i'm raising mine national religious, so the kids will have a bit of cross culture when they get older (if they talk to each other).

Shabbos was very nice. My brother and his wife as well as my two cousins who are in the country came for shabbos as did my cousin's girlfriend.
I went to the wall for davening friday night. Jammed packed as usual. Dinner went well. We told them all the good news (see the loop). And then they all helped us carry the sleeping children back to where we were staying. Davening in the morning was excellent. It was an all English speaking minyan (though they did speak in heavily accented Hebrew) and it was in Ashkenaz, which I haven't heard in a long time.
Lunch wasn't until 12:30 and in retrospect it was probably good because it split up the day more then it would have if we had eaten at 10:30. After lunch there was a lot of adult conversation (well more like 22-25 year old conversation) going on and the kids were stir crazy because they are used to wide open spaces.So we headed back to the apartment we were staying at and napped for a little.

On the way back we stopped at KFC, I recommend the spicy wings and continued on our way.