We told the kids

Tonight's family meeting had four items on the agenda.
1. If you want an iPhone app that costs money, you have to pay for it with your allowance money.
2. Everyone is doing a kickass job helping mommy and aba with the move. Kudos.
3. No licking your friends. It passes germs. (And there will be plenty of time for that later).
4. After the baby's born and after summer camp, we're moving to Israel.

Now we fully expected a total and complete multi-party meltdown after we dropped this bomb. Because we have talked to the kids before about the possibility of moving to Israel and our son has mostly responded negatively. As in, no way in hell. I want to be with Heather and Aly in first grade. I want to move to Orange County and live with Grandma in a house with stairs. I don't want to go to school where everyone speaks Hebrew. I don't want it to be nighttime when it's daytime for Grandma. I don't want to carry a gun (I don't know where he picked that one up, but unfortunately that's a valid concern).

This is how that part of the conversation went.
Me: ...our whole family is moving to Israel.
Him: And Grandma too?
Me: No, Grandma is staying here. But she'll visit us and we'll visit her.
Pause
Him: We'll have to redo the settings on your iPhone I bet.
Me: Right. You could be very helpful to mommy with your expertise.
Him: And the plugs are different there. I'd have to practice putting in the the two round holes instead of the two rectangular slots.
Me: That's true. But we could bring all of your old electricity stuff and you could show your new friends how different electricity is in America.
Him: Ya. And there's really big slides in Israel.
Me: In every city.
Him: And I can go to work with Saba and Savta.
Me: Yes. And maybe some of our friends will come to visit us!
Her: And have a sleep over!

This was the abridged version. The original dialogue was heavy on the iPhone settings and the new phone number and calling people in the middle of the night which will be daytime for them, and the video chat feature that my phone has and Aly's dad's phone has. I figured I should just let him talk about iPhone settings for as long as he needed to process this whole thing. I'm sure this isn't the end of the conversation since there's another six months until it happens, but considering how worried we were about telling them, this was a stellar beginning.