You know, some days are just more special than others.

Take Israel Independence Day, for example. Fireworks begin the evening before, and it just snowballs from there – even here in the Negev.

Our family went with our friends, the Mouallems (you know, Becky’s “parents”) to a barbecue picnic at the nearby reservoir just outside the Yattir forest, a ways up the road from Tel Arad.

It was wonderful. There was a moonwalk for the kids on the other side of the “lake”, music (which of course made no sense, it being sefira, the period in which the Jews made their way from Egypt to the Holy Land – we don’t listen to music)…

And later we went to visit Avi’s friend Avshalom, who lives in an abandoned transit camp called Machane Yattir, where he grew up. He has about an acre of land, two dozen chickens, half a dozen ducks and geese, a dog, several cats, a handful of goats and some sheep. He is an artist, of course. He works in wood.