Jerusalem

Our daughter Shauna and son-in-law Roberto came up with this crazy idea while they were on their honey moon in Paris. Picture this: they are walking through the Louvre and somewhere between Rembrandt's Bathsheba and Leonardo Davinci's Mona Lisa, they plotted to send us to Israel for or 25th wedding anniversary.

What a beautifully unselfish thing to do, not too mention expensive.
So they surprised me ten days before the trip with well planned out gifts in numerical order. For example say number one was a travel pillow with ear plugs and a sleeping mask. That threw me off because I have never used such things in travel. Probably because I was never that well prepared. Our daughter however is a well organized planner who thinks of everything.

Number two was several packs of gum which I always take on a flight to keep my head from exploding but I still did not put one and two together. By now I imagine that everyone was very frustrated and ready to throw in the towel. I was the only one who did not know about this trip. They had been planning it for at least eight months.

I'm sure they were very excited to have me get the clues. Shauna had to have put considerable time into coming up with the ideas and then buying the gifts and wrapping them. Looking back I really feel stupid when I think of how one of the gifts was a book on learning Hebrew and another gift a travel book of Israel. How dumb can one person be. It was starting to sink in by then but the thought of the possibility of such a trip was just not comprehensible to me. Well, it could have been a 'working up to a trip on Israel package'. My motto has always been, "never get overly excited about anything until it is actually happening" or at least I'm sure that it will happen.

When I realized that the tickets were bought I still could hardly believe such a possibility was mine. How amazingly wonderful and exciting. I still find it hard to believe at times, that we were actually across the world in Jerusalem. To be continued...