Bikes on a mission

Every once in a while (more closer to once...) I scheduled a less structured day. Today was one of those. My plan was to go into Tel Aviv to Gan Yehoshua, a very large park with a variety of activities on the grounds. http://www.touristisrael.com/yarkon-park-tel-aviv/1098/  My sister and I packed up our cars with as many kids as we could (Poor ol' Shlomo still has school!), a picnic lunch, some play equipment and off we went. We both have a GPS, but that doesn't mean that they will both lead us to the same part of the park. My car ended up in one spot across from Luna Park (an amusement park with rides and roller coasters) and hers took her across from Tel Aviv University. I won't read into that too much.
 My kids were practically drooling at the site of the amusement park, but we have a bunch of those at home and I was looking for a low key day, not a spin til you barf sort of time. Once we finally found each other (and as you are taught when you are child, if ever you are lost stay put and let people find you, so that's what I did. I let her find us!) we tried to figure out where to go. We saw a great big ORANGE colored structure in the distance. It looked l ike a playground to us, so off we went in that direction. Once we got closer we saw that it was one of Israel's totally random sculptures. Adjacent to it was a tree naturally growing sideways that was just asking to be climbed. So, climbed it was.
The Rock Garden was right next to us, but the kids gave us such a look at the suggestion of going into a rock garden that we thought they might just stone us if we did; we decided to move on.
We found the play ground with in minutes. It is a gigantic wooden climbing structure. It even has what my macho boys referred to as the world's shortest zip line, but that didn't stop them from trying it out several times. They played, climbed, swung and ran around until we thought it was best to break for lunch. Once everyone was refueled we decided to look for the Zapari (Bird park) and something called "Junga Junga". I had checked out the website and it looked like fun, but suspiciously they had left out the pricing on the English site. http://www.zapari.co.il/?categoryId=22402 The Zapari was fairly close to the playground, but at 50NIS a head we thought it was a bit steep for what they had to offer. What "Junga Junga" truly is shall remain a mystery.
 We had seen scores of kids of all ages riding around the park on 2-6 passenger buggy bikes and the kids really wanted to try them out. These ended up being 20NIS a person for 1/2 an hour. It was at this point that I had discovered that Bailey's Lamby was missing. Lamby is a stuffed animal lamb head attached to a small silk blanket. Her "lovey". This is what I had been worried about for weeks before our trip. Bailey cannot sleep without Lamby. I even have to time the washing of that thing to avoid nap time or bed time. What a disaster this was going to be. Our bike buggies now had a mission -- retrace our steps in hopes of finding Lamby. We pedaled around the park every so often sending someone scouting out the area to check. No such luck. Lamby was MIA. I tried not to dwell on it, but it wasn't easy. We kept going around the park, discovering a water park and concert stage; we raced eachother and even bumped the competition out a little. The buggies were easy to pedal and steer. Even the younger kids took turns pedaling while us over sized babies sat in the front seats.
We made it back hot, sweaty, tired and thirsty. We stopped for refreshments (Popsicles! of course). It was time to go. Although it would have been faster to go to the car a different way, I wanted to try one more time to find Bailey's Lamby before facing the rest of the trip with an inconsolable toddler. Low and behold Dovie found it on top of a hill that we had briefly passed through. Oh thank Heavens! I had never been happier to find that grubby lamb. Even Bailey was cheering when Dovie was waving it around. Now we can go.