Hanukkah, part I

We have been having a bang-up Hanukkah so far!  The first night, we celebrated with just the four of us, with the special food being donuts.  You knew donuts were traditional for Hanukkah, right?  Anything fried.  In Israel, they especially go for warm jelly donuts (sufganiyot).  We each had our favorite from Top Pot Donuts right down the street.  Then, we spent entirely too long assembling .... drum roll please .... bunk beds!

The boys are thrilled.   The first time Jordan climbed up to the top bunk, he said, "It's like the view from the Space Needle!"  He had spent a few days in advance selling Aaron on the advantages of the bottom bunk.  This is working out fine; the bottom is more appropriate for Aaron anyway, and down there you can make a blanket fort.  It's such an improvement in their room - neater, more floor space, and less trampoline action.

The second night, we celebrated with a work friend of mine from North Dakota.  There is not a lot of Hanukkah in North Dakota, I gather, nor in Iowa where he used to live, and he really enjoyed hearing Jordan tell the Hanukkah story.  (I noticed with pleasure that our temple has taught Jordan that the eight-days-of-oil bit is the "story miracle," and the real miracle is the survival of the Jewish people and culture in the face of both assimilation pressure and a military threat.)  Our friend had also never had latkes before, and he loved them.  I make a good latke.

The third night we attended a fun Hanukkah party at the home of some Temple friends of ours.  Most everyone else was neighbors and school friends of theirs (and mostly not Jewish... this is Seattle, after all).  I was especially impressed by their caviar dish.  I didn't take a photo of it but it was just like this one.  When I complimented the hosts, they laughed that the caviar dish had been in some sense the whole inspiration for the party - they had to come up with some excuse to use it.

Tonight is the Temple Hanukkah party and it should be a lot of fun, with more latkes, a magician, games, singing, etc.  I spent this morning in the Temple kitchen with a dozen other grownups and another dozen seventh graders, preparing 500 latkes for the big event.  It was a great time!

All this and we still have four nights to go!

Last year, we did both Hanukkah and Christmas, because Christmas was important to Dale growing up.  I was fine with that.  Upon reflection, however, we decided that both holidays was just too much.  So this year, we explained to Jordan that Hanukkah is our holiday and Christmas is other people's holiday.  He showed no signs of trauma.  (We don't think there's much need to prep Aaron; he is more in the moment.)  To distract from the hoopla associated with December 25, we have arranged to fly to San Francisco on that day.  My family is very low on hoopla.  Dad said something like, "We don't even have any hoop here, much less la."