Big Dreams and Easter Vacations

Be careful what you wish for, cause you just might get it all... For some reason, this phrase always makes me think of winning the lottery, so no, we did not win the UK lottery. In fact last time we played (we do it once a month just because of the old joke about the guy who dies and when he reaches heaven goes to God and says - why did I never win the lottery? and God says - because you never played...) we had exactly 0 correct numbers... So yes, no lottery winnings for us, but anyway I was trying to start a whole different post.
One of the things I discovered over the past couple of years is that realizing your dreams and living in them are two very different things. Usually you don't really think about it do you? You have a dream and you try really hard to realize it, thinking that thing, the fulfilment of that particular dream will change your life forever, for the better. But it doesn't end there, because say you did it - you realized your dream. Now what? Well, here is the kicker - you now have to go on living with it, after it, in it, however you want to look at it.
I'm guessing by now you know me a little bit, and you know I don't do well with unrealized dreams. I have a sever aversion to what ifs, to the road not taken, to giving up. So I try to make each and everyone of my big life-changing dreams come true. To this day I only have 2 I still have done nothing with - I have not lived in San Francisco and I have not opened a bakery (though I did have a baking business in Gibraltar). Oh yeah, when I was about 20 I wanted to someday be up the corporate ladder, but I reckon if I go to SF, I can always take a ladder to Google headquarters and climb it :)
Over the last year we made some big changes and realized some dreams. Small stuff like, you know, moving to London. It's not like we've been dreaming about doing that for about 8 years. Noooo. The thing is, there is a difference between the moment you sit down with a bottle of wine and some chocolate and tell yourself - "yeah baby, we've done it" and the actuality of living here. A moment that has yet to come now that I think about it. It's important to stop and enjoy your moment, right? When asked I always say yes, sure, enjoying your victories is important. Take at least as long as you would had you failed. But we didn't, couldn't, and now maybe it's too late because now we have to deal with the reality of this dream, of living here and sometimes, well sometimes, it's not all it's cracked up to be. Because some of the reality of living in London is that it's more for the "young professionals" or the "young at heart" or anyone who doesn't have an 8 years old and a 4 years old boys that needs recreational activities. I know what you are going to say - it's you, so stop blaming London. Maybe it is, I don't know anymore, I do know that it feels kind of weird complaining about London - how can we? How can we complain about living in London? and especially after all the years we've dreamt of coming here? but somehow we found ourselves with the realisation that it's April, it's a week into Easter, and in the last 3 months we had one day of outside-the-house-real-London-day-of-fun, and we really can't see it changing any time soon. We found ourselves sitting around last week thinking that, hey, we expected more. We expected a never ending stream of opportunities, of things to do. We expected it to be LONDON, and not "just" London.

So we searched and scoured the globe in order to find fun things to do in order to save Easter and London from total ruination -
When my friend was still here we took the kids to Covent Garden to see the Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies scattered around, and of course eat some chocolate muffin. Yon can't leave the house without his beloved Starbucks chocolate muffin.

 

Hidai and Ron went to watch an Arsenal match for Hidai's birthday and because we found one we were quite certain the team will win...

Then we took them to Ripley's Believe It Or Not, because my friend wanted to go and we've never been. I didn't really know what to expect, but I found that I am not a fan of the whole 2 headed 3 legged animals and weird looking people. Everyone enjoyed the mazes - mirrors and lasers. All in all a good day out, which was finished with McDonald's and 2 very tired kids.

 
We had a visit from the Easter Bunny that the kids waited and waited and waited for, but when the morning came it took them about 3 hours to notice them on the dining table...

Hidai took advantage of the only semi-sunny day to take the kids to play outside a bit and pretend it's actually Spring.

Lastly for now we took them on the best day out we could think of - a visit to the M&M shop (fourth time) because my kids absolutely love it.

we took them to Yon's shrine - Hamley's. The minute he goes inside it's like he is in heaven. All those soft toys and animals, he just can't get enough. We were there for an hour going through each and every animal before Yon let us leave.

After that and the traditional chocolate muffin and McDonald's we took them to watch We Will Rock You at the Dominion Theater. We wanted to take them to a musical, but we are not big fans of the kids musicals - I don't understand the whole movies-made-into-musicals thing and Yon isn't big on the people-dressed-as-animals thing, so that went out the window. We finally settled down on Rock of Ages, but the lady at the ticket booth said it is not advisable with it being set at a strip-club and all. So we took them to We Will Rock You because we've already seen it a few years ago, and the kids knew almost all the songs by heart. We've bought tickets in the middle of the stalls and prayed that the kids will like it. They loved it. Ron was transfixed, and even Yon was into the whole thing for most of the time, except for about 10 minutes at the start of the second act, but by the time the big numbers have arrived they were both singing and clapping and everything. So very recommended.

 

Oh yeah, we also taught the kids how to play real Black-Jack with chips and all. A very viable life-lesson for Ron, the house always wins (and as I was the house, I treated it as if I won).

So did we save London for ourselves? to be honest I am not sure. We decided when we got here to try and enjoy everything we could in London, that way if we leave here we will have no regrets, we will feel as if we exhausted everything there is to do here. We haven't of course, but we also found out that some things are not for us anymore, or were never for us, and that what we get out of London is somewhat different to what we originally thought. Yes, once again we learned the lesson that things are more complicated than we think.
For this week we have so many plans... Tomorrow is yet another one of Yon's fun-fun-fun eye checks, then we have a movie on Wednesday (maybe, it's all rain dependant) and a trip to Golders Green is also on the cards.
Yes, we are all about the fun.

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How Hidai saved Mother's Day

As things went this month, I was a bit surprised when March 10th arrived and with it Mother's Day. I actually usually like Mother's Day very much. I think mothers deserve a day in which they get acknowledged for everything they do and for the fact that, let's face it, they are taken for granted every other day of the year. So I always make sure people around here knows that it's coming, are working hard on flowers, chocolates, cards and a day that is just for me. Last year Hidai got me a bouquet of candy and so combined it all together :)
But this year I was not in a celebratory mood. With everything that's been going on with Yon and the fact that I felt we were neglecting Ron as a result of it, I was all for cancelling Mother's Day. Bad mums don't deserve to celebrate. They don't deserve to be commemorated. They deserve to not get cards, or flowers, or chocolates. They deserve to do laundry on Mother's Day.
And that was exactly my plan, but for one thing...
Hidai wouldn't let me cancel mother's day, and he wouldn't let me sit around the house moping, and so we found ourselves going out of the house. Shocking, I know. The thing is, it's really tough finding things to do that everyone will love. If we go to something football-related then Ron and Hidai will be ecstatic and Yon will misbehave and I will be half-bored. If we go to anything science related then Ron and Hidai will be in geek heaven, Yon will want to touch everything, and I will be half-bored. If we go to anything animal-related then Yon will be in heaven, and everyone else will be half-bored.. If we go to anything shopping/art/baking related then I will be happy and everyone else will be totally bored and will not really try and hide it. It usually leads to one of two things - not going out, or choosing something the kids will like. But Mother's Day is, as is apparent by its name - my day, and I wanted to do something that I will enjoy (a choice that usually leads to no-one having fun because the kids misbehave and Hidai & I get upset). But this time... This time we had total success!
We chose the O2 Arena, because we wanted to see the mini exhibition that Sky Studios had of Harry Potter (and we thought Ron would love the chance to sit down infront of the camera and read the sports news). I am kinda ashamed to say that we've never been to the O2 before, and we were very impressed with the whole thing. Will definitely come back to see a show there (when Hidai & I are able to agree on the show of course). The good thing in a place like that (in our point of view) is having space for the kids to run around, and after almost an hour on the Tube, they needed some running time, and loved the fact that there were lines of color-changing light-bulbs on the floor that they could run around and jump on. We loved the fact that we don't have to run. After that we went strolling in the "entertainment avenue", which goes around in a circle and is full of places to run and places to eat. When we got to the end of it we found the British Music Experience, which is (surprise, surprise) a museum dedicated to British Music. We debated because Yon is not really good in museums (or anywhere else he can't say "just looking" while touching everything), but what sold us was the movie they have outside that shows the interactiveness of the museum.
I am not really good with the whole description of every minute thing, mostly I think because I find it boring to write, so how can you not find it boring to read? So that is why I am just going to say that if you haven't been there and you like music - go, go, go.
I find it surprising (in a good way) how interactive and child-friendly everything is in London. This museum has a room where you can play different musical instruments and a singing booth where you can sing and record yourself - the kids (including Hidai) played on the drums (while saying Jack Black said no drums...), the piano and of course the guitar (I always forget how musically talented Hidai is), and they both recorded themselves singing Bohemian Rhapsody (and made all the adults in the room smile). There is also a dancing booth, where we were taught how to dance the chicken dance and do some Rock-n-Roll 50's style.

Singing

Playing

Dancing

You also see 2 movies, at the start where they explain about the museum and the smart ticket that record everything and let you watch it at home, and at the exit where they do a little "live show" of the British Music classics, and Yon gave a bow to the crowd at the end :). The main part of the museum are rooms devoted to each era of it, where you can learn, listen, and watch everything music and culture related. We were there for around 3 hours, and each and every minute of them was total fun, and I think we already watched ourselves doing the chicken dance about twenty times...
When we finished there we had some lunch at Pizza Express, because the kids love it and we have yet to be in a branch that was not child-friendly. The dessert was a bit of a letdown, but truth be told I am very particular about my chocolate cakes, so it's really hard for me to find one I like, and Pizza Express is not a place to find good chocolate cakes...

Pizza time :)

We continued our day in the place we originally intended to go to - Sky Studios, which turned out to be  20 minutes of fun and laughter - Ron & Hidai got to read the news from a teleprompter to a real camera-man, we all got our picture taken in "real" studios with TV stars (like the Ninja Turtles in my case!), and we got to see the mini Harry Potter exhibition with some really cool things they borrowed from the Warner Brothers Studios, and as a result we decided to celebrate Ron's birthday this year with a trip to the Warner Brothers Studios to see the real "how they made the Harry Potter" thing (it was a HUGE relief as we've been struggling with his birthday celebration for the past 4 months, trying to figure out how to celebrate it with style and with no football).

At the Studio

I ended the day at home with a hand-made card from Ron and a store-bought one from Hidai, 2 very happy & exhausted kids, and a sense that maybe, just maybe I am not the worst mum ever to grace this earth and my kids do actually appreciate me (somewhat).
Happy Mother's day :)

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Christmas 2012 Recap

This is the third time I've started to write this new post, and hopefully third time's a charm, because up until now every time I start something happened and changed my perspective and what I wanted to write about. The first one I tried was a re-cap of Christmas and how much fun it was celebrating Christmas in London with my parents (it was a lot of fun), then it didn't happen because I couldn't find the time and energy to write and I thought maybe it will be boring to read a long description of what we did, so I posted lots of photos on Facebook, and started writing the second post that was all about the new year, closing 2012 and opening 2013, resolutions and things like that, but then my parents left, I was sad, I was behind on all the house chores (the laundry is still smirking at me. I can feel it), Hidai went back to work and on top of all that yesterday was not the best of days family-wise. And that is how we ended up here, on the third try of a post that frankly I don't know what to write in.

Decision time - after the computer decided to delay this post even more by deleting everything I've been working on for the past couple of days, and life decided to annoy me this whole week, I've decided, after one batch of laundry and one jar of Marshmallow Fluff to split it and that this post will be a grandparents and Christmas recap, elbit a short one (I will try at least to keep it short) and the next post will be a more serious year-end-new-year thing.

Christmas with my parents was absolutely great. Way way better than we hoped. We had a few concerns going in, mainly because it was their first Christmas ever and our first one living here, and living in Israel you don't really get the whole Christmas spirit. You do get criticized about it though. A lot. That is why in spite of all our best efforts to make them understand the Christmas, they didn't, and we were worried that all this Jewish/Israeli pressure will arrive here with them and will not let them (and us) enjoy the Christmas properly. Luckily we were proven wrong, and they jumped right on the Christmas wagon. It was the first time since April 2008 that we were touring London with my parents, and it proved that we learnt a few things since then :).
What did we do? First of all we spent 2 months on Skype telling them horror stories about the weather to make sure they come prepared, and even though it wasn't really London cold, it was way below Israel temperature, so the fact that they brought each and every piece of warm clothing they have (and some new ones) helped a lot, and they were comfortable most of the time (except at home, where I keep the temperature at a lovely 25 degrees Celsius).
We gave them our bedroom and slept on the air mattress in the living room (actually, since it's open plan, and I didn't want to move anything in the room we slept in the kitchen). First of all it contained (most of) the mess in one room that has a door you can close, second of all it gave them privacy, and third - the mattress is better. Oh and they had the TV and en-suit of their own, so we got no complaints... It was the first time we've done that, and it worked beautifully.
We made lots of plans, so that each day we had a plan - even if that plan was to stay at home, it was still discussed and planned. We made every effort to go outside and enjoy London.
We had TV shows and movies at the ready, so that not every night will be an all-night-long conversation about life and family. We watched all the stand-up comedy shows we could find (I loved Michael McIntyre the most), and the Skyfall movie (really don't understand the hype)

We started our Embrace the Christmas campaign on the first day, by taking them to Oxford st. to see the Christmas lights. It was raining. It was full of people. it was magnificent! For Hidai and me it was a full circle since we first came to London for our honeymoon 9 years ago Christmas eve, and walked around Oxford st. watching the lights and the people. Not a lot has changed in the last nine years, except that we're now living our "live in London someday" dream, and that, well, we had 2 grandparents and 2 kids with us. Not as romantic as the first time around...

 

Next morning we continued with a trip to Coven Garden and its area to see the Christmas lights and feel the Christmas (and the rain).

After that we had a traditional Christmas dinner. With a turkey. I know it might not seem like a big deal, but we've never roasted a turkey before (or anything else for that matter.), and we actually ordered what we hoped would be an already made one. It was not. It was a 5 kg (11 pounds) scary beast that sat in my fridge for 4 days (vegetarian here). But after grandma (and Hidai) prepared it, everyone said it was very good (next Christmas - smaller turkey, more stuffing). We went with the Jewish tradition of having the big dinner on the eve of (it's done, I think, because according to Jewish belief the day runs from sunset to sunset, so the holiday begins on the sunset of the eve - the day before. And also that way you can enjoy a big dinner on the eve and have a big lunch made from exactly the same food on the day. That is done because Jewish people always make enough food for 3 days. Otherwise it's as if you haven't made enough. We had everything I understood you're supposed to have in a Christmas dinner - turkey, gravy (store bought. This year we invested most of our efforts in the actual turkey), mashed, sweet potatoes (maple glazed of course), rice, sweet carrots, sprouts and a cake (chocolate-orange yummy creation in the shape of a Christmas tree).

 

Grandparents also had their first visit from Santa, who (while watching Friday Night Dinner Christmas Special) had to work really hard the night before Christmas to make sure the kids got the same number of presents from the same people. I find it kind of weird that there is no one "correct" way to celebrate Christmas and every family does it differently. In Jewish holidays there is only one way to celebrate, one way to give the presents etc. So what we do is - each kid writes a list to Santa (at the moment Ron is in charge of both of them), give it to mum who as part of her duties as a Christmas elf (seriously. It took me a while to convince Ron that I am an elf...), pass it on to Santa, who then allocates gifts to different people in our family (translation - mum put everything in the excel file and then buys almost all the gifts and stick different tags on them so that the kids will feel they get presents from lots of different people in the family), as the time passes in December and always although we start the month with most gifts ready, and saying that this year it will not happen, we buy more gifts for the kids, and then on Christmas eve we allocate all gifts so the kids have the same amount of gifts and from the same people in the family (no jealousy allowed on Christmas), and of course Santa always has his gift. This year we added the new pijama and a Christmas T-shirt to the whole thing, and of course Ron wrote Santa a really long thank-you note, to which he got a lengthily response. Being a Christmas elf is a lot of work.

 

After Christmas, we promised my parents the full Boxing Day experience, so we took the bus to Oxford st (damn the Tube strike. It can be done on the bus but takes ages...). Next year I think we can switch to the much more convenient method of Internet shopping. Much less crowded. But anyway for us it was again a trip down memory lane. Unfortunately it was not as satisfying as it was nine years ago. I guess it had something to do with not having 800 Pounds to spend in a day this time :)

 



After all that, we waited at home for a rainy day or two and then headed out to visit Winter Wonderland in hyde Park - where we won (after a few tries, in a few booths, I must say) a huge teddy-bear that we had to carry home on the tube, but that Yon adores. We were there for about 3 hours and didn't even see half of it, it was so big and full of things to see and do. The kids were really disappointed to leave, but it was getting cold, we were getting hungry and so we decided it's better to leave before someone cries. Being in Hyde Park obviously led to going back to Marble Arch and some shopping for grandparents (we had a teddy bear to get home...).

 

We closed off the year with a visit to the Natural history Museum, to finally watch the dinosaure exhibition (gorgeous exhibition, and even Yon liked it). We've been putting off going to this specific museum because of me. I wasn't sure if the exhibits are not... Too gross for me (there was one with the inside of the animals, or the insect one that has... Insects). Also I always feel as if it's really hard getting to the museum areas from our home. It's not. In the end it turned out that it's very easy getting to the museum, and that the museum was very interesting and not gross. Success.

 

We embraced the New Year with a some wine (our favourite, that grandparents brought with them from Israel), a movie (New Year's Eve, which seemed an apt choice on New Year's Eve...), and the fireworks on TV (were very sorry we weren't there) and outside (some young people took initiative and set up an unauthorised fireworks display inside our communal area. Gotta love young people).

To really feel like tourists we went to see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, but it was packed so we only saw part of it. The kids really enjoyed St. James Park, and we took some pictures of the horses at Horse Guard Parade. We finished the day at Trafalgar Square, with its very big tree.

 

I have 3 photos from there, from over the years - the first one from 2003, the second one with Ron (and pregnant with Yon) from 2009, and from this visit. I guess it's one way to see how life has changed...

 


Ron won a ruffle to go to the Junior Gunners Fun Day, and had his Best Day Ever :) where he had a chance to meet all the players in the first team, get his Theo Walcott book signed by Theo, play air hockey and other games with the players and a pantomime show. It was 400 kids, and we were very worried that he will be okay, have fun, actually get the autographs he wanted (he got Walcott and Wilshere but not Podolski unfortunately), etc. Of course he was fine, he managed on his own and did not really care that we abandoned him there for a full day. Also I think Hidai was just jealous and that's why he was sorry he didn't get to go with Ron...

On the last day of the visit we went to the Battersea Children Zoo, because a) it's a very bad idea to sit moping around the house on the last day, b) we were unsure if Yon is actually ready for the big zoo (he did not really like the whole real animals are big realisation), c) we wanted to see where the hell is Battersea. We took the 19, which is known around this areas as "the magic bus" (seriously, people actually say that). It's a very cute zoo, very good four young kids, and Yon had the time of his life. He refused to leave. And to call it "a small zoo", he said it was "a very big zoo". And that's that.

 

The visit ended with pizza, Ben & Jerry's (chocolate fudge brownie. Is there any other kind?), and tears. But not to worry, they are back in May. And September. And December.

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