Elish thinks he's a dog

Elish learns a lot from those around him. One of his biggest influences is his big "sister" Leba. He immitates her in the following ways:

• He plays with the dog's toys
• He crawls over to the pantry where the dogfood is kept, opens the door, then opens the cover to the dogfood (in a big rubbermaid container). With one hand, he holds open the cover. With the other, he reaches in for the kibble pieces.
• Elish puts a toy in his mouth, then crawls around the floor with the toy in his mouth (like a dog carries a toy)
• He chews on rawhide (or trys to) when he finds them on the floor
• He chews on paper (just like Leba)
• He likes to eat from the dog's dishes
• He plays "fetch" - will 'go get it' and 'bring it back' when we throw a toy or ball (we are so sick...)
• He loves to go into the crate
• He 'mouths' like a teething puppy (oh yeah...he's a teething BABY!)
• He loves playing in the toilet...just like the dog
• We have a leaky shower head in the tub, so Leba jumps in, and elish stands outside the tub. They both try to catch the drops.
  

for those to lazy to click the link

Finally, the House Post.

This is the view from the back yard going into the back door. Maybe this will be for a future office? (Our trip just became a business expense) The first 2 floors are ours, the upper floors are the Gimpel's (next picture). They were also on a crazy week long trip to pick everything (EVERYTHING, all interior flooring, fixtures, etc) for the house.

























The first room you see is the front half of Chavi's kitchen. The part you can't see (which is where the photographer is standing) is the eating area. We broke down the wall seperating the kitchen from the rest of the house to create an eating nook after the cabinetry. The shape of the kitchen will be a U (you're looking at the 'U') One side will be dairy (the left) with the other side meat (the right). There's also a large counter for parve. Tons of cabinets to accomodate all of of Chavi's pots, pans, Kitchen Aid mixer, coffee machine (that's Daniel's). Our carpenter, who is building all the cabinets is great!











The next two pictures are from the master bedroom and master bath. There is a room off the master bedroom that can be used as either a nursery or a walk in dressing room. The master bath is huge. We combined two bathrooms to make MY bathroom. No kids allowed (yeah rigggghhhht!). We found a nice jaccuzzi (180cm x 90cm) and we are enclosing an area 1.25 meter square (a little more than 4 feet by 4 feet) for a standing shower with a bench. I get a Mitriani Shower panel. (In Hebrew they call it a panelle). Chavi is getting a sunflower shower head suspended from the ceiling.


















This picture is a large childrens bedroom. This is the biggest childs room. However the window doesn't have a good view. We chose a different bedroom for Elish, one with a good view, so he can relish (shout out to Dovid and Mindy) the view.






Speaking of the view this is the view from our neighboors house













This picture is of the living room, which is off the dining room and then on to the porch. We are thinking about enclosing the porch with a glass roof and windows to preserve the view and shield from the wind. We might get glass etched French doors in between the living room and the solarium (former porch)






















The next two pictures are candids from our trip. We had to spend a lot of time negotiating with Yanki, the foreman for the project. Chavi discussed aesthetics and logistics, you can imagine what my role was. Elish was just too cute. Notice he is sitting on the table with the master plans for the house. Behind Yanki on the wall a chart of plots in the new neighboorhood in Neve Daniel. We were here 2 years ago picking the plot. Some things in life take time.

We spent 15 hours in the Negev Store. We needed a place to keep Elish so we put him in the jaccuzzi there.

He entertained all the customers. Negev wanted to use his picture in their marketing. I said it depended on the discount they would give us for the flooring and fixtures.

*NEW* video tour of our house is available

To watch the video click here

much more pictures and video to come

Our house is at the top of the hill near the water tower 

We're back!

That's Elish and me on the plane coming back from our crazy week in Israel. Thank G-d we got everything accomplished. Stay tuned for pictures and a video tour.