Happy Birthday, Ilana!

Wow--double digits!  Today is Ilana's Hebrew birthday and we are (finally) done celebrating.  We noted her English birthday.  And Shabbat HaGadol.  And she had a party in school. And a party here.  Party, party, party!

home party.  Thanks, Grandma Rhoda, for remembering to send candles with your present!

School party.  Ilana's in the back holding up the butterfly-shaped cake she made.  She's with her "birthday buddy" Tamar, who made Aliyah on the same day as us.  So nice they had a joint birthday party!

For her party, the girls made tote bags from T-shirts.  Tamar said she was like the Jewish story character Savta Simcha, who has a never-ending handbag

They also played "pin the olah chadashah tag on the Ilana".  Every year, we have a themed "pin the....".  Were we still in Malden, my guess is that we would have had "pin the glasses on Ilana", since wearing glasses is a big new thing in her life.

We brainstormed and she chose this theme.  When we arrived in Israel, all the new olim were given tags saying "oleh/olah chadash/ah" so that it would be easy to identify who, in the vast crowd at the airport, was new.  I hadn't thought about it until Purim, when someone from my class came to ulpan wearing a costume of their aliyah t-shirt and it had the sticker on it.  Brought me right back!

It was certainly different having a party without the ol' beloved Malden crowd of girls, but I am glad that Ilana has made such good new friends here.  All the girls above speak English (as well as Hebrew).  The girls on the far right and second from left made aliyah this past summer, and the middle girls have been here since they were toddlers.