Football in the hippodrome

We've been wanting to play American football with several of our American friends here ever since Thanksgiving. We finally got it together and all went down to Tyre to see if it would work out to play in the Hippodrome there. It was SUCH a great experience. The kids got to run and play all day- climbing on the ruins (yes, in Lebanon you can actually do that), running around in wide open spaces, picnicing together. It was a blast. Karen (one of the other moms) and I kept looking at each other and asking why in the world we hadn't done this before in the almost 5 years that we've lived here. Here are a couple of pictures from the day.


The caves that the kids are standing in front of are actually old grave sites and alot of them had decaying bones in them- yuck!

Thankfully, Naomi was thrilled just to be able to pick flowers and didn't try to climb too much. I was a little nervous about her climbing after her recent busted chin.

To the right is what is left of the stands from the hippodrome. In later pictures you can see we set up our picnic area right in front of the stands and played ultimate frisbee and football with the kids.

Scoping out the playing field and picnic area...

Ultimate frisbee in action...

THE CHEERLEADERS!!!!

Here are some pics of the kids' football game...












Maddie and some of the other girls got bored with the games so Aunt Kellie helped them make flower wreaths. They were thrilled!