Happy 2009!

We all stayed awake until after midnight to ring in the new year! Isaac had to endure watching me smooch Emily so my evening was made! We played dominoes and Life and watched movies. It was a good time! I am a bit too tired to type any more. Happy 2009!

Gentile Dreidel

A while back, the kids were asking about Hanukkah.  Apparently they had some friends that had dreidels in preparation for the Jewish celebration.  I didn’t really know much about Hanukkah aside from the dime store version.  

Anyhow, I figured in the spirit of…uh…learning more about Hanukkah, I’d do a little research on the holiday.  I told the kids about the Jews’ rededication of the temple in Jerusalem and how they only had one day’s worth of oil to burn in the lamp and how the oil lasted for 8 days.  All in all, it was pretty interesting.  They knew I was building a dreidel though so they were anxious to get to the game.

I don’t know if it is proper for a non-Jew to play this game so if we were out of line, someone let me know.  In the meantime, we had a lot of fun.  The dreidel has 4 sides, each with a Hebrew letter:  nun, gimel, hei, shin which form an acronym that stands for “a great miracle happened there”.  A cool thing that I learned is that in Israel, they change the letter shin to po which changes the acronym to “A great miracle happened here”.

So for the game, the letters are given these meanings:

• Nun - nisht - “nothing” - nothing happens and the next player spins
• Gimel - gants - “all” - the player takes the entire pot
• Hey - halb - “half” - the player takes half of the pot, rounding up if there is an odd number
• Shin - shtel ayn - “put in” - the player puts one marker in the pot

The game can be played with any of a number of markers including money and chocolate.  Since the kids are thin on money, and since I might feel bad taking their money, we decided to play with mini-M&Ms.  It really is a fun game to play.  Each player spins the dreidel and does what the dreidel letter signifies.  

 I think spinning the dreidel might be the Old Testament version of Monopoly though as it appears to be a very long game to play.  We played for 20 minutes or so and were no where near declaring a clear winner.  In other news, I can confirm that M&Ms will melt in your hand.

Anyhow, we learned a little about other people and had some fun playing a new game as well. Abigail asked me if we could play again this morning. We’ll need to stock up on M&Ms I guess!

Of course, no discussion of Hanukkah would be complete without Adam Sandler singing his Hanukkah song!

Jack-o-lanterns

My Mom sent me a link to this cool site where you can desgin your own jack-o-lantern.  We virtually carved several options and settled on our favorites.  Wait, that sounds like we actually put some real planning into our pumpkin carving.  Ha!  We did do some virtual carving but then we just went to town on the orange gourds!

We decided that we have a new appreciation for our parents.  I cut the lids out and the kids reached into the pumpkins.  Isaac very nearly threw up on the spot.  Abigail held her supper a little better, but still wanted a pair of plastic gloves.  Like our parents, we just decided to reach in and pull the seeds (which we roasted…yum!) and goop ourselves.  I have never been queasy about things but somehow, we made a couple of kids who gag at the sight or smell of anything and everything.  It was actually pretty hilarious.

Anyhow, the kids carved their own pumpkins with those amazing tools they sell for carving pumpkins.  Who knew that one could actually carve a pumpkin without danger of amputation! Anyhow, they did a heck of a job.  After carving, we set the pumpkins outside so they can draw the proper number of fruit flies before trick-or-treaters arrive.
We’re all ready for Halloween!

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Food prices aren’t higher…

  Food is just smaller now!  We buy store brand cereal for Isaac and me to eat and I was surprised that the prices hadn’t really increased much lately.  I just noticed how they managed to keep the prices the same.  The older boxes we had were 14 oz, while the new ones are 12.25 oz.  I think I am a little irritated at this discovery as it is a trick.  I know prices are going up.  I expect it and I wouldn’t stop buying a product I like because the price goes up (within reason of course).  This is sneaky though…why not acknowledge the fact that stuff is getting more expensive rather than shave 1.75 oz from the product?    I am sure lots of companies are making this change so keep an eye out!

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My First Post

I am moving my regular site to this location and will use it to document stuff that we’re into.  This post is fairly useless other than to give me a starting point.