The news media keeps reporting about the Syrian Army, with Russian support, is recapturing the area near the borders with Israel and Jordan. The pictures show a lot of urban destruction. Well, we just spent the last weekend in some little cottages in the Israeli side of the Southern Golan Heights. I want to tell you about it.
The weekend was planned as a surprise for me and my wife for our golden wedding anniversary. Our 4 children did the planning, and kept us totally in the dark until our daughter and her family came to Israel from Newton, MA, on Thursday. Thursday evening we drove to Haifa for the first part of the holiday. We went to the Technion to see our second oldest grandson receive his degree as a mechanical engineer. The we were driven back to our car and our son-in-law took the wheel to take us to the cabins the kids had rented for ALL of us for the next 2 days. The accommodations were great. The mattress was comfortable, the pillow was the kind I like, soft and squishy, The cabin was decorated with a big streamer and many balloons, all in honor of our anniversary.
We weren’t allowed to do anything. The kids had catered meals brought in and they handled serving and clean-up.
The next day we went on a sort of treasure hunt/picnic. The theme included looking for signs with the number fifty. All the participants got t-shirts with the logo on the front and a crossword of scrabble letters on the back that spelled out the names of all our grandchildren. The path took us all the way around the sea of Galilee.
The scenery was spectacular. We drove past lush green vineyards, orchards, and lots of brown netting that covered banana plants. We ate in a nature preserve at the Northern end of the area before returning to our cabins. There was a large pool, and then grandchildren took full advantage of it. Our six year old granddaughter shoved her own handwritten note under the door that night so we found it when we woke up. She and her siblings (and parents) left a large number of multi-colored balloons at our door that we had to navigate through in order to get to breakfast. Another of the grandsons had his own idea and made us each a little baked clay item with his own congratulations etched into it.
I want to say a little more about the logo. My wife doe mosaics and sews quilts for the grandchildren. I have my website and model ship collection. Look at the logo and you can see that those elements are included, along with a paw print representing our two dogs.
It was a memorable event and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
Here we all are. 2 pictures, because the photographer is missing in each frame.
Wetherhorn 