More from Mercedes Street

As you all know, America suffered this weekend from yet another terrible school shooting. The whole country is obviously devastated. I'm not going to wax lyrical about it and I certainly don't want to get into politics, but the following one-minute clip was posted today on Facebook, and I think it is nicely put:




Toby is a very wise man.
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This week we were fortunate to have Avrom's brother here again, and he even stayed with us for Shabbat. As a result of his public shaming in my post of two weeks ago, he arrived this time with a very respectable selection of English chocolate, for which we were extremely grateful. I hope the American readers are not offended by our obsession with English chocolate and rejection of the American kind. I don't mean to be rude but Hershey's really is vile. Sorry, was that rude?

In case you were wondering, the kids had school over Chanuka, except for one day. They were not particularly impressed with this, since in Israel Chanuka is a school holiday. But the school lunches are still top-notch so they didn't complain too much about having to go. However, it meant that it was a bit less Chanuka-like here and they felt a little bit robbed. Plus the donuts weren't as good. I'm hoping Christmas will be better here than it is in Israel. Here's some photo evidence of the Gilbert American Chanuka experience on Mercedes Street, complete with extra Gilbert.

Don't be fooled by Leora and Eitan's apparent "hug" - I'm pretty sure she was trying to strangle him.

Today we took the kids ice skating. The three big kids had only ever been ice skating once before and for Tzofia this was her very first time. The rink is only a 5 minute drive from our house, which is most convenient. We were there for a couple of hours, during which time no limbs were broken and we got to see some real ice hockey (scary), some 10 year-old figure skaters (impressive) and some insanely skilled toddler skaters (weird). I'd like to be able to tick this off of our list of fun things to do in America, but I have a feeling there will be some pressure applied by the junior Gilberts to repeat the experience in the near future. However, I'm skeptical about how long our good fortune of no serious injuries will last, so I'm going to try my best to recommend bowling wherever possible.

That's all for now from us. Have a good week!