Hart and Melissa's Fabulous Website

On Thursday, August 7th, 2008 my sister and brother in-law had the pleasure of welcoming their first bundle of joy into the world! At 9lbs and 1.6oz. baby Falon Nathaniel came into our lives, with a smile, at 9:10am after almost 44 hours of labor!!

Congratulations Nick & Mikaela!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Welcome to parenthood...your lives and family will be more joyous every day for it!!

We raced off on vacation without posting the rest of our pics from our mid-summer adventures. So, before we post vacation pics we'd like to catch you up on our last couple of forays:

• The Artist @ Work
• A New Summer Playhouse
• Learning To Ride The Birthday Tricycle
• A Trip To The Folk Life Festival- Bhutan & Texas!
• A Quick Grammy Visit
• A Fabulous Weekend Trip To The Farm For Berry Picking and Then Camping On The Appalachian Trail!

We just returned from a truly a-mazing trip to Israel & Jordan, the culmination of which was attending Dahlia & Aran's wedding. We had so many incredible experiences and made so many new friends & extended family it was crazy-fun!

We began our trip by flying into Tel Aviv where we met bride and groom for a walk along the beach to shake off our jet-lag and get into the vacationing spirit.

The next morning we set off for Jerusalem.

Here I must pause to tell you that in Israel, the street signs do, in no way, correlate with the maps given to us by the rental car company. Neither in English nor Hebrew shall you navigate using those maps. This was confirmed several times during our stay when we would stop to ask for directions. The kind hearted soul helping us would say something to the effect of, "put that away, don't use that, all you have to do is....". No day was more challenging, however, than our wandering journey from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After more than 30 minutes of trying to get out of Tel Aviv, we finally made it out to Route 1. From there it was a short jaunt to the edge of Jerusalem followed by an hour of traffic and a good 30 minutes of getting lost within blocks of our hotel just outside the old city. Nonetheless, we had made it!

A bit edgy but extremely eager to get out and see the old city we proceeded to head down to the Damascus Gate and enter Old Jerusalem through the Muslim Quarter. What a site to see! A menagerie of people, colors, smells, sights, and sounds it was quite intense. After wandering there for a bit we headed over to the Christian Quarter to see what could be seen. We marveled at some of the churches and the architecture and then made our way over to the Jewish Quarter. We walked the "Cardo" and then stumbled upon the Kotel. We split up, men on one side & women on the other, and each spent a few special moments there.

Then it was off to take a tour of the adjacent archaeological park followed by a quick exit out of the Dung Gate and a hike up the hill to re-enter the Old City through the Zion Gate. We proceeded to wander the Armenian Quarter and arrived finally at the Jaffa Gate where we took leave of the Old City for the evening in search of a hotel pool and then dinner :)

For dinner, we headed out to Ben Yehuda Street for lively street performers and awesome schwarma and falafel!

The next morning we wandered back down to the Old City to meet up with a tour guide for a "3 hour tour". You can probably already guess that the 3 hour tour was far longer and more arduous than any of us expected (around 5 hours...). Our tour guide, Stanley, was, let's just say "colorful" in his description of the peoples and events that have taken place over the many thousands of years of history there. He was, however, thorough. We got a terrific tour of all 4 Quarters with a sound track that was not to be believed (really...much of it was not to be believed.).

Next: The Negev and our journey to the Red Sea!

After a few days in Jerusalem, we hopped back in the rental car and headed on down Route 40 into the Negev Desert on our way to Eilot on the Red Sea. Following the trusty advice of a gas station attendant (don't use that map...just head towards Be'er Sheva and turn left. Always turn left.) we made our way south with a few stops in mind.

The first stop was Mitzpe Ramon. A visually stunning geologic feature that is described as a "crater". They are apt to remind you this is not a canyon, it is a crater. Despite that reminder, it did remind us of Waimea Canyon in Hawaii.

Following a splendid lunch of huge portions on the rim of the crater, we piled back into the car and continued south in search of the internationally renowned Alpaca & Llama farm. We had a super cool tour guide and Sierra just LOVED feeding and petting the Alpaca and Llama. She even befriended a horse that followed us around for about 30 minutes.

More adorable pics showing Sierra is a friend to Llama and Alpaca everywhere.

Stay tuned for Eilot, The Read Sea, and Jordan (Petra!)...