Some days are very good

With a little encouragement, she walked several steps on Saturday. She still thinks its a fun game in her room and holds on to the wall and furniture the rest of the time. We're certain she'll be confident soon though.

Packages

I am experimenting with the new iPhoto and faster ways to post them on here. Here is one try for something different (package received last month).

Passover break

A few updates. We just finished passover break yesterday. Shawn had over two weeks off! A lot happened   though: broken laptop, rented car, bought new laptop, traveled with car to Capernaum, Hazor, Megiddo, Akko, Mt. Gerizim for the Samaritan passover sacrifice, and Tel Arad to see another Israelite temple. Then after we took the car back, there was Easter, Si's birthday, and a trip to Bethlehem.

Shawn is gearing up for some presentations, papers and finals. I believe he has about 5 weeks left in this semester. Shawn will be taking the first summer session of Hebrew again this year so that has us leaving Jerusalem the last week of July. Coming soon! I'm starting to get rid of some things now because we will be housesitting our last few weeks here.

Please pray for us! Shawn has an extra long to do list (he has all year!) and we all have a lot of transition coming this summer. Also, we keep talking about where we are going to live this fall and we haven't made many plans. Applying for jobs, etc, but no good leads yet. For a while we were thinking seriously about moving to CA (and start to take classes and then apply at UCLA) but right now that doesn't look like the best option.

More photos to follow...at some point. :)

Birthday party

Birthday morning 

Her cake. She ate beet cake, or at least she was given beet cake. She was smart enough to only eat the frosting.

FAIL at the beet cake. Not good enough for guests, but good enough for baby. Or so I thought.

All smiles outside.

Finally! 

Lovely people!

At this point she is getting tired. Terrible naps lately.

I put the cake back on the plate and broke some pieces off. 

Ugly cupcakes but I am happy to say everything from scratch and at least it tasted good.

She ate a bit of the pieces and then just threw the whole thing on the grass. She did have yellow cake too at some point, but I didn't get a picture.

Hammer and ball set from Mike. She loves it. She played with it today almost exclusively.

What a pretty card!

She also LOVES the phone. Right now its in the closet. I think its going to go on the plane with us. I want to keep it new for the flight.

It was a big day! She was so excited with the toys (some others not pictured yet) and people she struggled to settle down at the end of the day. Then she fell right asleep in the middle of bedtime routine.