Hanukkah

 Last Sunday was the first night of Hanukkah.   

To celebrate, we had a small famiy dinner with Jason's Aunt Marcy, her friend Diane, Alexandra, and my dad and Marilynn.

We made some chicken and of course Latkes.   WE followed a NYT recipe for the latkes.  One of the reviews suggested that they came out as tasty if baked in the oven as fried.   We decided to give it a try and baked about half.

  

The result:  fried was 1000% better.   the baked ones were too uniformly cooked and lacked the delicatness of the freshly fried variety.   

Well, now we know.   It is worth the mess to fry!

Anyhow, it was a nice gathering and a great way to kick off the holiday.

Holiday Activities

December always feels so busy because of all the extra activities that happen during the month.   This weekend was no exception.

On Friday night, Alaina attended her first school dance, Winter Wonderland Dance for 7th and 8th graders.   She went with her extended friend group and apparently had quite a nice time.  

 

Much to Alaina's dismay, Jason signed up to chaperone the dance, and served hot chocolate to the kids.   He enjoyed a little spying!

Meanwhile, in the city, Ethan had his holiday concert.   It is always a fun one with good holiday songs.  Ethan had quite a long solo in one of the songs that he was proud about, so that was fun to watch too!

Jason is 48

 On Friday, Jason turned 48.  For his birthday, he wanted to go to Tahoe for the weekend.

We headed out after work/school.   Enroute, he chose chinese food for dinner, so we picked a place along the highway.   Turns out it was a bad choice--despite the fact that it was quite croweded--the food was lousy.

So, we chose to do all the birthday celebrating on Saturday.   The kids were hoping to ski, but the early snow we had gotten had mostly melted and so the ski hill was closed.  There was enough snow on the groud for a snowman, at least!

Instead of skiing, we went to brunch at the Wagon Wheel--Jason's favorite breakfast spot in Truckee and the headed out in the forest to cut down our Christmas tree with a $10 permit.   Maybe becasue we were a little late this year and becasue there was less snow on the ground, the forest seemed fairly well picked over.   After hunting for awhile, we settled on a tree, that definitely was not the most beautiful in the forest....but will get the job done.    

 

We headed back home and had a cozy dinner in, with a proper celebration.  

  

Sundat morning we hit the road early so we could get home to decorate the tree and get ready for the week.