Greetings from Herzliya!

Well after about 3 weeks we finally are mostly settled in!! We are living in a smaller suburb just north of Tel Aviv called Herzliya Pituah. Its definitely been a bit of a haul :-)

It took till two days ago before we had Internet of our own and cable too so sorry for the posting delays! The flight in went smoothly which was greatly appreciated by Sebastian and I given the day before was spent fighting with the contractor transportation company about sending out X5 to Israel. Moving to new lands is always interesting.....

* telephone didn't work in the house and we think it is the line...turns out to be the phone! (this takes 10 days as you cannot simply call up the phone company - the listings are all in Hebrew :-)

* smaller express shipment comes just fine but the household goods (HHG)is still in Grafenwohr a MONTH later; they claim they didn't know where to ship it. Funny the same moving company picked up both shipments on the same day! Gotta luv those contractors!

* HHG is now being expedited and is expected at the end of this month - now we need the port workers to stop their strike!

* stuff that was supposed to be in the express shipment for the kids, is somehow, hopefully, sitting in the HHG for Israel

* still don't have the X5 yet. Not sure where it is really...Know others for whom, once it got here, it sat in customs for up to a month. Better than Jerusalem though - one person I know waited 2.5 months!

* food costs about double here for most items that are not produce (which are still more expensive)..for example; Pedigree dog food 9 lb bag is now $19; what we would call mac & cheese is $2.50, and regular dried pasta can range up to $4 a box! We will be losing weight here and Ty can not longer share with Max & Riley LOL

Lots of other little quirky things that I am sure will come out in future posts! For the time being I just wanted to say Hi to all and get some photos up. OH! And Ty celebrated her 2nd birthday here - not many pics I am ashamed to say but it was fun. We hit Tel Aviv, Jaffa and a great mall close by where she picked out her elephant couch. The next day we took her to the beach :-)

Okay gotta run..here are some pictures for now! Miss you all!!

Ty's first archaeological site





Hey what do you expect - we just moved (and it IS a food group for my Daddy!)


Ty at the beach

The girls on Ty's new elephant couch


But Alex prefers her swing - something that did make it here!!

Grafenwohr Volksfest!

Closer to flight day....

At Garmisch

Hi All!

Well we are that much closer to flying out. Out flight date has changed a couple of times but it is currently August 15th. We'll see if that changes. We have not only Alex regular passport but all of our diplomatic passports as well now so with the exception of a bit more paperwork (aka visas), and other errands (ship car, dogs paperwork, etc) we are pretty much set. Movers came 2 days ago for the Israel stuff and this coming Thursday for the stuff that is going into storage (which is the rest of the house LOL).

As if there was not enogh things to do we also bought an SUV :-) It was something we had been considering for a long time but thought we'd hold out till we got to the USA. funny how when you are not looking for something is when you find it! It was a great deal and after our last trip to Garmisch , well Ty's legs were almost resting on the shoulders of Sebastian's seat - it was time for a change!! LOL Now we can get kids, car seats and dogs, bikes, etc into the car.

Our 2004 BMW X5

Nice clean roomy and Ty likes the panaramic roof window too...nevermind sitting so high that she can see better out the side window and, best of all, LEG ROOM!

Tyler and Alex are doing great given the chaos. Lots of appointments and the house gradually keeps disapppearing - Alex had a case of overload when then movers ame. Too much noise and action. Ty was over at a friends house and didn't seem to mind when she came back and so much was gone. Hopefully she will be okay with it when the rest goes next week!

She is soooooooo looking like a little girl these days!

Alexandra had her 2 month visit - all went well and she is an alert, happy 13.5 pounder :-)

Thats all for now - still need to hit the mail room and send more stuff off. I will try to get at least another post in before we go. Hugs to all!

Update

Well it has been a busy couple of weeks! Sebastian has been in Tel Aviv for the past couple of weeks shadowing the guy he is replacing and getting some other things done on his end...We finalllly got the orders late last week so I have been running around making arrangements on this end. Originally we thought we would be there by the end of this month but that is not going to happen LOL so it is looking like the 2nd week of August.



Aside from orders I was relieved to find out that Alex's passport is finally in and we should get it next week hopefully here in Graf. I don't have any new pictures of the pudgling since Sebastian took the camera with him!!! I will take some pictures once he is back of the kids - I cannot beleive how Alex has grown. When she was 6 weeks she weighed 12 POUNDS..yes I said 12 - thats not a typo!!! I weighed her last night again (now about 7 weeks) and we are at 13 pounds...the girl does not miss any of her 15 meals a day LOL but I am still surprised. Tyler was a big girl too, but I don't remember her growing out of so many outfits by 6/7 weeks!



That pretty much has been it for the past couple weeks - PCS'ing with 2 kids and 2 dogs takes over your life :-) Will try to update again soon!

BED HEAD!

We took this picture last week and I just had to put it up...Tyler was born with a lot of hair - but Alex has her beat! I don't recall Ty having bed head at 4 weeks old LOL