Photo Friday (Vol. XLII) [sneakers edition]

Photo Friday hasn't really had a unified theme.  It has really been an odd assortment of stuff you people have asked to see... and random things that catch my eye during the week.  However, I hope you'll understand that once in a while I have to post some pictures of the kids in order to remain in various relative's wills. 

Besides... one of the reasons I started treppenwitz was so the far-flung relations could keep up with each other's progress.  I see our kids every day so I sometimes forget that there are relatives all over the US who are aching to catch a glimpse of their Israeli cousins, niece, nephews and grandkids.

Fair enough... here ya go:

Yesterday evening we went into Jerusalem to the Malcha Mall to look for sneakers for the kids.

In her quest to replace the much-loved purple hightops she had outgrown, Ariella really had her heart set on a pair of striped (shtripey) Converse hightops...

... but unfortunately  they didn't have them in her size. Instead she picked out a nice orange pair (now that orange has lost some of it power to inflame).

Although you wouldn't know it from the picture, Ari selected the color and was delighted with the way they looked:

Gilad is much less interested in color... and all about function.  He picked out a nifty pair of leather black & white sport shoes that will be equally at home on the basketball court and the street.  The angle of this shot makes him look short, but he is actually getting to be quite tall and lanky (blame the photographer!):

Where, you might ask, was Yonah during all this sneaker shopping?  He was sitting quietly on one of the comfortable chairs in the store reading some of his favorite poems from a well worn Keats anthology.

Yeah right. 

I would have been happy if the 'sitting quietly' part was true.  Who am I kidding... I would have settled with just sitting! 

Seeing as we didn't get to the mall until well after Yonah's bed time, he was, um, a tad less than cooperative.

Luckily his behavior (running around in circles, shrieking and knocking over displays) was not easily distinguishable from most of the other shoppers in the mall... so we had that going for us.   

Trying sneakers on Yonah in that condition was quite the adventure.  Picture a calf-roping at a rodeo... except we weren't able to tackle and rope our 'calf' nearly as quickly as the professional cowboys.  I was sorely tempted to have him branded once we had him wrestled to the ground, but I settled with just letting the sales girl jam a sneaker on his flailing foot as we all lay on top of his writhing little body. 

I was almost relieved when the sales girl informed us that she had nothing else in his size.

For the rest of the excursion whenever someone wanted to go into a store the rest of us had to keep Yonah occupied out in the mall.  I now understand what those coin-operated rides are all about.   For 2 sheqels you can buy almost a minute of silence.  Money well spent.

Some rides even had room for two:

Well, that's about it for today.  Sorry for the light journaling this week... lots of stuff to share, but Rosh Hashannah intervened. 

Shabbat Shalom!