He started waking up at 6:30 we were up at 6:45. We heard Chuck and Cherie up and I told him he should go yell “Happy birthday!” Instead, he decided he wanted to be a mouse and went and scratched on their door. We all packed up and cleaned up the place. He went outside and was an archeologist with Carly outside. They left a little museum of garbage out on a tile. We packed up and took showers and got ready to go. Carly took him down to the playground and he played on the exercise equipment before we left. He showed me his garbage museum and we left at 8:40.
We drove through town but nothing was open. We went up to the visitor center and walked up to the cafe there. It was open, and we ordered two of their big breakfasts: one with an omelette and one with shakshuka. August and I went over a couple times to see the climbers setting up at the top of the cliffs. He seemed to already kind of know how it worked (the ropes and being tied on), and when we went back he told Carly all about it, including new information. He ended with “So it’s actually safe!” But then added “Only dada can’t go down any cliffs.”
Breakfast was good. And it included some matzah. The shakshuka was a lot better than the hostel one. August’s favorite part was the chocolate spread for the bread.
We left breakfast before 10 and drove over to the sculpture park. August was being grumpy as he had wanted a treat in the car but he had just had the chocolate toast. And he was complaining about not having a winter. So he wasn’t too excited by the sculpture park and said he didn’t like the one with swings. It was an interested spot for a sculpture park, right on the edge of the crater cliff. But kind of big, basic monolithic sort of sculptures. Wouldn’t rank it too high on my sculpture park list.
Left there at 10:40. He was still grumpy over treats but got into doing some shaky art. And he definitely cheered up when Cherie started giving him bits of cookies. He was hiding it from me. When I said he smelled like cookie he laughed and said “Someone gave me cookie-flavored tic tacs to make my breath smell like cookies.”
We stopped at a crazy busy Pas gas station. It was on the southbound side so we had to turn around to get to it. That also meant that all of the vacationer traffic heading south was using it. Rather a zoo. I filled up the car while Carly took him to the bathroom. We left before 12 and Cherie decided we should head home instead of Jerusalem.
He wanted to learn how to change the time on her watch. She started by telling him she’d tell him when he was 15 or something. She then knocked off a couple years. He said “The limit to how long I can wait is one hour.” When we went around curves he would hold his arms out to hold up me and Cherie, even though we were assuring him we weren’t squishing him like yesterday. He said “This is the problem with having Oma and opa around.”
We read the Cars book along the way and were home at 2:10. When he was in the bathroom he had a bee scare. he screamed and told me a bee had flown in. I didn’t actually see it, so didn’t entirely believe him. But back out in the living room he spotted it by the sliding windows. I started to try to get it out and he got really scared and I told him to go over to Opa and he ran over to Chuck on the couch. I got the bee out. When I went upstairs, telling him I was doing so, he came with me saying “don’t ever leave without me.”
I made him a peanut butter and honey sandwich, his first in a week, and he was excited: excited “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!” “This bread that I’m eating is pretty good.” We were talking about it being Cherie’s birthday and what she wanted to do with it, and he said “What do you mean? I have control of your birthday?” She asked what he was going to do with it and he said “Mess it up.”
Carly went to get food at Younes and to water her plants at school. August and I were lying on the floor together. He said “I like everything…even war.” When I asked why he said “Because the bad people are destroyed.” We then talked about how that isn’t often the case. He took me and Cherie upstairs to “explore” for Opa. Chuck had gotten his phone working with the Israeli card.
August and I ended up playing with the magnetic drawing board. I was writing words for him to read and he said “When you’re done with that word, spell ‘Wikipedia’.” We then talked about different kinds of encyclopedias and he asked how you could edit Wikipedia. I looked at the page for Even Yehuda and found a typo on it. It said “one the south” when it meant “on the south”. So I had him make his first Wikipedia edit to fix the typo.
Carly got home and he was so excited; “Mama! Mama! Mama!” We had an early dinner outside. I cut up some strawberries. He ate the meat when Cherie told him not to. Cherie said something about colorful foods being healthy and I joked about skittles. He said “Speaking of Skittles, we should have Skittles sometimes.”
They worked outside (August helped Chuck pick up the tree things) and August and Carly ended up sitting in the swing and talking. Chuck walked over to the store to get eggs and I was inside, typing.
August came in and was hungry. Chuck had just gotten back and had apples. I suggested apples and peanut butter. He was upset at first as he wanted Cheerios. He said “Together!? That doesn’t sound good!” But just a few seconds later he was telling Carly that he was going to have Apple and peanut butter. We went down and sliced an apple and he ate about 3/4 of it with peanut butter.
Carly started to vacuum so we fled upstairs. He wanted to find Oma and opa and said “Where is everybody?”
We came back down and read the first four chapters of The 52-Story Treehouse while Carly took a shower. He was getting sleepy, so we headed upstairs and got ready for bed. I left them at 7:55 and he was asleep right away.