Trip to Israel, Dec-Jan : Second week in Raanana: Wednesday-Thursday

On Wednesday we went out to Renanim, the large local shopping centre. This was one of the rare times Eti left the house since we arrived. Between clothes shopping and window browsing, the girls enjoyed the games. Eti got the girls beautiful clothes – their wardrobe is always enriched by her good taste!

Then we stopped at the soft play centre. Eti refused to take off her shoes and sit on the padded sofas inside, so Emanuel stayed with her outside while I took the girls in to have fun.

Its a lovely play centre, catering for a large range of abilities with great equipment in very good condition.

We stopped for lunch at the food court. We looked at an edible chess set for dads birthday but decided not to buy... Next we had another play session at the other soft play session, near the food court, that is designed for very young kids. All the equipment constantly rotates very slowly, which was very unusual and a good challenge.

The girls favourite part was the cool shoes wheel that moves around to balance the shoes weight. The girls liked the odd playground with its constant turning equipment.

The balls pit was like playing in split pea soup...

In the evening we visited the Kleks family in Hod Hasharon: Amir (who worked with Barak at ITG), Keren, 5 yrs old Lotem (who is an enthusiastic pen pal of Hahgoot), 18 months old Ella and Moka the dog.

While Lotem and Hahgoot got along straight away (they made Hello Kitty tattoos on each other!), Ella was a bit more cautious, but Alma was happy to check out all her toys.

My cameras battery went flat, so Amir kindly took all the photos.

Thursday morning was VERY windy and stormy (it rained most of the night). The girls played on the carpet with the great magnets game. I upgraded the tub (gigit) with a new coat of colour and the girls were happy with the result.

My mother arrived and again the park plans were scraped, this time due to the weather. There was so much wind that if they would have gone out, my mum would have probably used the girls as kites... I did go out, despite the weather, as this was my only opportunity to do my big shopping spree at our favourite school workbooks shop down the road. The lady there knows us for years and her fabulous recommendations are part of Hahgoots success. After I left the shop with 4 very heavy bags (and a good discount) I was nearly blown over by the wild gale. For lunch we tried to order take away but the restaurant didnt answer, so my mum went there in her car and brought back great Asian food, including salmon on a stick, that Hahgoot LOVED.