Joel's Hanukkah Present

Guess who else decided he wants to learn to play guitar??

 

Last Night of Hanukkah

And a quiet New Year's Eve at home this year!

 

Ice Skating

Abby and I took the kids ice skating this afternoon so Becca and Caroline could try out the ice skates they had gotten for Hanukkah. Everyone had fun! Caroline is so funny on the ice, she bends her knees and gets centered over her skates and then goes totally stiff so you can pull her across the ice pretty much as fast as you want. Becca skates slowly and carefully to try to avoid falling, and Amelia pretty much does the opposite:)

 

New Computer

Tonight's Hanukkah gift was a new computer for the whole family, since the 6 year old iMac has been dying a slow death lately. Caroline sat patiently next to me while I got the new computer up and running, so she could play some games on the PBS Kids web site when I was finished ;)

 

Hanukkah Night 5

We made it over to Papa and Mary's house last night for a yummy dinner of pasta with meatballs and latkes and to celebrate night 5 of Hanukkah!

 

 

 

 

Mid-Week Update

Ben got a desk and chair for his room for Hanukkah last night. I am trying to give him some things he NEEDS this year. It was actually really easy to put together, but weighs a ton.



In other news, we got a quarter stuck down the garbage disposal and had to have someone come out to tell us that and fish it out, and also look at our upstairs hall toilet. On Christmas morning at 2:15 a.m it started raining in the kitchen. No, not a Christmas miracle, an overflowing toilet. After the mess was cleaned up I turned off the water to that toilet and forbade anyone from using it until I could have someone come look at it. That someone couldn't find anything wrong with it and said it is OK to use and just to "keep an eye on it". The kitchen ceiling doesn't look TOO much worse for wear - though there are some water stains around two of the recessed lights where the water was pouring out of. and one or two of the boards in our kitchen floor, which are brand new mind you after last year's kitchen flood disaster, are showing some warping. Not TOO bad either, so I'm not sure if we're going to attempt to do anything about that or not.

My next order of business is to figure out how to get the hot pink Sharpie off my BRAND NEW TABLE. Yes, someone who shall remain nameless (Ok, Caroline) decided to color using a hot pink sharpie and it bled through the paper onto my new table. Apparently I need to sand it off and then apply some poly acrylic sealer to it. Wish me luck with that.

Crossing my fingers that nothing else breaks / gets ruined this week!!

Latkes

We were supposed to go over to Papa and Mary's for latkes tonight but they had to reschedule and Caroline announced she couldn't possibly go one more night without latkes! So we needed to make some of our own. The resulting latkes turned out great and were delicious, though shortly after giving them "double thumbs" Caroline announced she didn't like them after all and she was sure Papa and Mary's will be much better - gee thanks Caroline!