This is the alter in the land of Dan in the northern kingdom (opposite of the golden calf--next picture). A lot bigger than I thought. The fire was below, the animal up above.

This is right where Jeroboam put up the Golden Calf, ruining the people, sending all the righteous south, and leading the 10 tribes into scatterdom.

This is a momument in Northern Israel right near the Syrian border in an area called the Golian Heights. It is a mountain or hill once part of Syria. Syria surprise attacked Israel from here in 1974 and drove into Israel. After 7 days, the Israelis pushed them back and took this heavily fortified hill. We saw all the bumkers and walked thru them. It's like a gettysberg for Israel. Syria wants the land back, but Israel is not about to give it. It's high, Syria has repeatedly lobbed rockets and stuff from here at Israel.

The Syrians were brutal, planted land mines all over the place in the Gordian Heights, and they are still there, so they have to block off the area. Mom almost went in there!

Misty can be brutal too, mom and dad barely escaped this ugly episode by some skillful negotiation by me!

Mom and dad at the Golian Heights monument on the Israel side. These hills were FULL of Syrians and Egyptians trying to take over issrael as recently as 1974. Quite a battle.

Some military personnel showed up to the Golian Heights momument and learned some secreet training methods from me.

Near the top of the Golian Heights is an old fortress built by someone, but conquered by crusaders in the 1200's. It's just massive and at the top of a mountain, cool place. and ther's Darent!

I totally conquered the Crusades fort! I'm at the very top! Got me very dizzy up there, I was glad I didn't fall!

The edge of the Golian Heights, the fields just beyond the white compound is Syria. They invated Israel many times from here. They used to have Golian Heights, but Isreal took it back in 1974 in a battle and will not give it back this time. sorta weird to think that at any time, and many times in the past, your enemies may rol over the hills with a huge army. Tons of military activity around here.

The best thing about our baby-sitting experience so far? Honesty.

Tonight Isaac and Alex were outside jumping on the trampoline and I heard Alex scream at Isaac and Isaac started crying. I came out and she said "did you hear what I said?" and I said no, so she told me what she'd said, word for word, then apologized and told me what she should have said instead. Then tonight as I was walking down the stairs she said,

"Emily, are you pregnant again?"
"No," I said.
"Oh. It sure looks like it," she replied, looking me up and down.

Nice. Gotta love honesty.

The water is Waaaaay too deep to touch ground out where I am....and you can still put your hands up in the air. you just bob around.

Hopefully you can zoom in well enough to read this. It is HIGH-Larious. At the Jordan River they have these plaques all around with the description of Jesus' baptism in about 25 languages. This English "Pidgin" one was the most entertaining!

We crossed into Israel from Jordan, which took a long time. very tight security. took hours. But we made it to the River Jordan where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist. This stretch of the river was not where Jesus was baptized (because where Jesus was baptized is now just a trickle because the country uses all the water), but this was where Naaman went to wash 7 times as instructed by Elisha to rid himself of Leprosy. He was reluctant, he wanted to do some great thing, but his servant convinced him to do the easy thing and he was cured.

Mom and Misty deciding whether to lap up the water like a dog or hand-cup the water to their mouths.

That's delos under a waterfall at one of the other hotel pools. Would LOVE to have Austin, David, and Alex at this resort, it was amazing.

View of the dead sea from one of the 3 hotel pools, you could walk right downt he hotel stairs to the dead sea where we were swimming in the pictures below

That's delos after getting mudded up with the special dead sea mud.

Dad was the first one in and very brave. it was a bit chilly getting in, but fine once you got used to it. mom of course refused to get in.

Try this pose at your local pool! the Dead sea is 10 times saltier than any other body of water on earth. yet it looked clean and nice! This time misty has the mud-face

This is the Dead Sea on the East bank from Jordan! This was the funnest day we had by far! Very fancy resort right on the dead sea beach. we went down and got in, they have famous healing mud I put on my face here. then a got a big rash!you can totally float with your hands and feet up in the air. no way to sink! sooooooo fun!

Daren and Dad inside the old Cairo mosque

This was a mosque in Cairo. pretty neat old place.

The River Jordan

The Dead Sea

The Nile

This is the temple of LUXOR. outside there is a road that goes 3KM to Carnac, another of Ramses II places. The whole 3km is lined with sphynx on both sides of the road every 15 feet or so.

Valley of the kings, they probably chose this site for all the tombs because of this mountain in the background that looks like a pyramid.

Cairo

here's what the villages look like outside of Cairo. Kids line up at the road to try to sell junk to us. Emily might be able buy a house here!

This was just inside one of the king's tombs across street from King Tut. had to pay the guard a buck for this picture (not allowed to take pictures inside the tombs...unless you find a guard who wants $$)

One of Ramses II temples, Habu temple. huge and stunning, the colors on the ceiling are so vibrant, can't imagine this place when it was new. was about 105, one old lade sat down and fainted in the heat (from our group)

One of Ramses II tmp;les. his are amazing. like 3 of 'em.

Then to the valley of the kings. This is king tut's tomb! no pics allowed inside for some reason. about 63 kings tombs here.

we're tired as death. got up a 4am yesterday for our flight to luxor...and didn't get home until 3 am. flight problems. We started at the nile river. lots of crocs. Crikey!

Cinco de MAYO!! Watch some of Alex's sweet bowling moves:

Saturday with the Larson kids We loaded up all five kids (Noah is to the right of Isaac) and headed out for the day to go...

BOWLING!

Here's a nice shot of David's gutterball. The first of many. We didn't figure out you can raise the bumper things until right before we left. Oops.

An action shot of Austin's sweet moves. He got a strike!

Isaac and Dave cheating a little

Noah LOVED watching all the action.

Alex LOVED 'tending' Noah.

Here's the kids havin' a grand time...until David got a strike and Alex refused to be proud of him. That's when we had our first "meltdown" moment of the week. I wasn't sure what we were going to do to get everyone happy again/non-violent/able to talk to one another without screaming and crying. All it took was Alex making her own strike!


Here's a shot of the scoreboard. In case you can't read it, Dave got a 176, I had a 129, Isaac had 103, David had 57, Alex had 65 and Austin had 90. And that was without the bumpers! Pretty good!!

We celebrated our scores with lunch at Sweet Tomatoes. Austin's choice.

Here's David eating his third helping of "healthy" ice cream.

We miss you Mom and Dad!

Love, David, Alexis, and Austin

read the following posts from bottom to top, I guess I have them in reverse order

Then I tried to climb a stone in the mummifying temple near the sphynx. they don't really care one bit about their national treasures here. you could take in a hammer and chisel and take a peice of their pyramids all day. and camels roam all around and people are riding them.

There are like 118 pyramids in egypt, can you believe that? after getting home tonight wiht no sleep for 2 days, we have to get up tomorrow at 4am to head to luxor. won't be back until 1am the next day. here's mom near the sphynx

Then we went to the sphyx. piles of more kids tried to sell us everything under the sun again. I thought it sure was funny that napoleon shot off the sphynx's nose with a cannon!

All around us and behind the pyramids Cairo is the most slum-pit you can imagine. loooks like an A-bomb landed on all parts of the city. it has 25 million people. And they all HOUND you like we were their only chance for a meal to buy ridiculous stuff. an they are mostly kids (with parents lurky by). We didn't buy much from them. but I tried to adopt one. here's the bottom of the pyramids, you can see how huge the stones are.

Here we are with a few pyramids in the background.

after arriving at noon we went straight to pyramids. And never seen crazier drivers. I thought bus driver would kill many people. Our phones are not working here, so we have to figure out how to call.

then when we arrived in Cairo on this very plane. There's dad and Darent.

Hello one and all. We made it to Egypt this morning with only on terrorist incident! Dad and I took care of it, so don't worry. We're all tired as death though. No sleep on plane all night, although you can see we all tried here....

Austin, Alex, and Misty at Alex's 8th birthday party last week

So my 3 weeks of watching Delos and Misty's kids started yesterday. So far, so good--with Delos's kids at least. My kids are a different story. Isaac begged to go home last night at bedtime but he was so tired he did eventually fall asleep. Then he woke up about 8 times in the night screaming that he needed to go home. Noah did great yesterday but today is very out of sorts and I had to let him cry for an hour to get him down for his first nap. That's going to be the hardest part for me. I can get Delos's kids ready for school, pack their lunches, do scriptures and family prayer, help them finish their chores...but what do I do with Noah and Isaac while I'm doing this? I don't know how people have 5 kids. It doesn't help that I think Noah is teething and all David and Isaac do is fight...plus I have no idea how to do a little girl's hair. I did it and Alex said she thought it was cute, but it was terrible. Anyway, these kids are being so good and it's nice that they're old enough to mostly watch themselves. It's going to be a fun 3 weeks!

I love Gilmore Girls. I didn't jump on the Gilmore Girls bandwagon until a few seasons ago. Isaac was a baby and abc family showed old re-runs during his naps. Now I can't get enough, but this season has been driving me CRAZY! Would Luke and Lorelai just get TOGETHER already? You know they love each other and they belong together. I'm sad that the Palladinos left the show because the writing hasn't been quite the same this season either. Still, it's one of my favorite shows on TV and I just want MORE. So tonight Logan asked Lorelai if he could marry Rory?! I love Rory and Logan. I know some Gilmore Girlers don't love Logan, but I have loved Logan from the first show he was ever on. Yep, he was a jerk, but he was a suave jerk. And now he's Logan and I love him. This is an interesting conundrum...

THIS JUST IN!

Dave just informed me that the Gilmore Girls season finale is going to be May 15th! It's going to be sad! I wonder how it's going to end? Hmmm...possibly with Luke and Lorelai getting back together? Rory and Logan breaking up and Rory getting an amazing job at a newspaper? I can't wait to see.