Spin the Dreidel

Even though Christmas was always the more largely celebrated winter holiday when I was growing up, our relatives on my Mom's side of the family celebrated Hanukkah and my Mom always lit the candles in the Menorah (and I recall it being a huge pain for her to try to find the correct candles where we lived  in the middle of pretty much nowhere and it being in the olden days of no internet shopping!).  Leighton has always been curious about this and has asked about a Menorah the last couple of years, so last year I got one with some candles (a little easier for me to swing by Target than it was for my Mom!) at the end of the season so we'd be prepared for this year. 

Well, I forgot the first night (cut me some slack - it was Thanksgiving and Leighton was sick with a high fever so our plans were all messed up, remember?!?!), but by the second night we were good to go!  When we were lighting the candles that first time, Riley asked if it was time to sing 'Happy Birthday', which gave us all a good laugh!  The kids had fun helping me light them each night, and Riley was disappointed the other night when she realized it was gone.  Roy had to cheer her up by reminding her that we had the Christmas tree since we were now celebrating Christmas, and just like birthdays and Thanksgiving and Halloween, Hanukkah had to come to an end.

I also took the kids to the library for a Star of David craft one afternoon after school.

And we sat down for a game of Spin the Dreidel one afternoon.  I had grabbed a bag of chocolate world coins from Trader Joe's one day a few weeks ago (because for some reason Leighton is always obsessed with chocolate coins - he must have read about them in a  book or something!), but my Mom reminded me about Leighton's book that had a dreidel and so we pulled it and the coins out to play.

And just a note for anyone ever wanting chocolate coins that do not taste like disgusting plastic - these ones from TJ's were really yummy (especially the Canadian loonies and twonies!!).