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.  

Thanksgiving in So Cal

The kids were off for the week again for Thanksgiving, so we decided to take a trip to Southern California, and do some college visits prior to the holiday. 

We flew into San Diego early on Sunday morning and made a quick stop to see our former au pair Rebeka and her family.   Her daughter is now almost 2, and she is pregnant with a second!   

While in San Diego, we also walked around the UCSD campus, which, not surprisingly, was pretty dead on a Sunday morning.

On Monday, we had tours at UCLA and USC.   I was impressed with both campuses--both are really beautiful and have a lot of spirit!   

Because I am not keen to do all these tours again with Alaina in a few years, I asked her to keep a notebook about her visits.   She took the task to heart and did a great job documenting her time!!

  

After we had dinner with Jeremy in LA.   On Tuesday, we checked out some small colleges: Pomona and Claremont McKenna.    Both are located East of LA, in a more suburban area.  The weather was absolutely perfect when we were there--a great way to woo applicants!   Ethan really liked Pomona,  but of course it is really tough to get in.   Funny enough, our friends the Cortez family were also on the tour--they were also in So Cal for Thanksgiving!   So we went from not seeing them in a year to twice in a week!

We enjoyed dinner with our medical school friend Jenny and Andreas on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, enroute to Palm Springs, we visited Joshua Tree National Park.  Jason had never been there before--the last time I took the kids he had to work--so wanted to visit.  Again, we had great weather and the kids enjoyed scrambling along the rocks.

We made it to Jason's parents house in La Quinta on Wednesday night, and spent the next three nights with them.   

Taller than grandma?

We were again really lucky with the weather and enjoyed some sunshine.   Eileen cooked a really amazing meal that we all enjoyed!

   

Hike in Half Moon Bay

 On Saturday, we met up with our freiends Sue and Ben and their kids Cruz and Whitney.   Though we try to get together a few times a year, our schedules make it difficult, and it had been quite a while since we had last gotten our families together.   As the weather was beautiful, we decided to take a hike, and again met at the Grey Whale Cove hike south of Pacifica--we had hiked here in June 2024.   

We enjoyed an 8 mile, 1800ft elevation gain hike in the afternoon--finishing just after sunset.   The kids were so much bigger since the last time we have all gotten together.  The weather was calm--much less windy than the last time we did the hike, even though the fog was rolling in towards the end of the day.

  

A Beautiful sunset over the fog:

  

After our hike, we were ravenous, so we headed to Half Moon Bay and had dinner at Tres Amigos Taqueria--a place Jason frequented when growing up.  It was delicious and a great end to our day.   So fun to catch up!

Fall Ball

This weekend was Alaina's last fall softball tournament. This year, the girls are 2nd year 12u players and had a much better record this fall compared to last.

 

Alaina has been playing consistently, and her fielding has been really good.   Unfortunately, their coach bit off a bit more than he could chew this fall becasue he also coached a 14u team.  Because that was a new team, it was not quite a good as ours and since he could not go to different trounaments with the two teams, our team ended up playing at some 'easier' tournaments....and after winning them repeatedly the coach had the team move up to play 14u.   They did pretty well even in that age bracket, though they never won a 14u tournament.  

Now, we have a break until the new year!

End of XC Season

 On Friday, Ethan had his last race of the XC season.  He ran the hilly 5k course at 21:52, which is 7 minutes per mile!   Considering that he had a slow start to the season, and obviously has some physcal limitations he--and we--are very proud.   He also ran a mile in 6:16 at a time trial the week before.   Both times are personal records for him, and really incredible progress!   I couldn't run that fast if my life depended on it!

 

Now, all the growing he has been doing helps--he is nealy 5'11" now--but also he is in great cardiovascular shape.  Now that the season is over, he tells us he plans to keep running over the winter....let's see!