Moving on up...: MAZAL TOV to DANNY!!!

Sooooo.........through the magic of the crazy world of BLOGGING, I have "met" bec........she's an hysterical writer, thus a great blogger, and now, through the magic of email, a great friend. Anyway, when we came to Israel this past summer (yes people, we are here almost 6 months!), she gave us her cousin Danny's "pratim" (phone number and email), and told us we should call him. Of course we didn't mind and were happy to invite him over for a shabbat dinner back in the late days of the summer. The FUNNY thing is that when we had Danny over, he had no idea that bec and I still to this day had not met face to face!!! So here he is, sitting at some random shabbat table (with an incredible view I might add), and he's like, "What? so how do you know her???" to which I had to admit that I didn't really KNOW bec, but I just KNEW her through emails and reading each other's blogs! Gotta love living in 2006 (yes I know, almost 2007). AND, ya gotta love ISRAEL, cuz I don't think elsewhere it would have been so normal to just invite over a random "email-friend's" cousin. hee hee

Anyway, so why am I wishing Danny a MAZAL TOV??? Danny, an OLEH CHADASH (new Israeli immigrant), just had his swearing in ceremony for the Israeli Army!!! You'll see in the pictures below that the ceremony was last night at the kotel, in the big promenade/plaza area that essentially overlooks the praying holy area. There were no kidding, THOUSANDS of people there! AND IT WAS FREEZING COLD!!!

But we were happy to be there for him, got some cool pictures to send home to his family, and then came back to the warmth of our place to hang out and shoot the breeze till wee hours of the morning. It was fun and with Danny's permission I am posting these pics. Notice his new tag on the shoulder (in the pic where it looks like he is doing a sideways muscle man pose!) . He is very proud, and we are all proud of him!!!

Here's a shot of Danny and I (kotel in the background)