Taking it easy

 
Our plan for this short Friday was to go to the Herzl Museum in Yerushalaim. We reserved a spot in an English tour at 8:45 am. This would mean leaving RBS at 7:30, and to meet that deadline, getting everyone up at 6:45/7. Many mornings most of us were up at that time anyway. Friday morning at 7 am none of the kids were up. I decided that since our past week was extremely busy to let the kids sleep and to wait it out. They didn't even get up until 8:30am. I finally wore out my crew!
Once everyone was up, dressed, davened and fed it was closer to 10am. The Herzl Museum was obviously not going to happen even at a later tour time slot. I completely forgot about my back up plan of the Police Museum right here in Beit Shemesh (which rumor has it is free). My 13 year old was content to read and relax and watch the 2 year old. My 9 year old was just as happy to go with me into the Mercaz of RBSA to so some pre-Shabbos shopping and to hunt down some chapstick. The wind and dry weather and maybe even some of the poor air quality due to the Arson Terrorist Fires raging through the country made his lips cracked and miserable. So off we went for some odds and ends.
Shabbos as usual was wonderful. We spent it once again with my sister and her family. The cousins played and marched around to each park. I think my 9 year old really enjoyed his freedom to roam. Their 9 year old daughter took my 2 year old to a few of the parks, I really enjoyed their freedom to roam without me!
We didn't really have any plans for Motzei Shabbos, but I wanted the kids to get out just a little, so we went to the new mall in Beit Shemesh. We took my nephew Shlomo with us. He is in High School/ Yeshiva so his opportunity to join us during the week was non existent. Our first stop was the new ice cream shop. Fortunately for Mendel they had a wide variety of pareve flavors. They also had a help-yourself chocolate syrup pump and sprinkles that were pareve. Everyone got their scoops and cones, I waited for Atara to decide that she didn't want hers, she wanted mine. Lucky for me I was able to convince her that adding sprinkles to her half consumed cone was enough of an upgrade.
Even though we all had eaten plenty on Shabbos, the boys were hungry. If you ever have the pleasure of taking teen/tween boys on a trip you will notice they are always hungry and can always stop for a bite. There was a shwarma restaurant that met the kosher seal of approval for my nephew. He helped Mendel order since the menu was only in Hebrew and there were a lot of options. I saw a kids meal on the menu. It seemed a little pricey, but I figured Meir and Atara could split it. It was so cute. They served fries (chips) and schnitzel nuggets in a deep fryer basket. There was enough food there for Meir, Atara and the rest of us to at least pick at.
We popped into market down stairs to load up on travel snacks and to check out if there were any flavors of Doritos or Cheetos that we hadn't sampled yet.

When we finally exhausted the options of the mall, and had visited my sister at her job at Terem (urgent care clinic that we fortunately only visited as a social visit), we headed back home for our final full day in Israel.