Happy Chanukah

Things got busy on Friday night, so my Chanukah notes come late on evening #2:

We had dinner with friends (brisket and latkes). As I may have mentioned before, Chris makes a fantastic brisket. Better than my mother's. One of the guests, a Chinese qigong master, was particularly interested in hearing the traditions and lore. Or maybe he was just really into the He'brew Chris bought to go with dinner.

Ellen brought gifts.

For me:

For Chris:
And a bag of bacon.

You can see that everyone was pretty thrilled:


And yes, that white bear ("bear," not to be confused with "bear," the one on the left) is holding a dreidle. He also wears a yarmukle, though that is hard to see in the photo. Weirder than the bear itself is the fact that the toy came to us from Chris's cousin in northern Idaho, who pumped a bunch of quarters into one of those claw machines to get it for Ada. Which begs the question, what is a Jewish themed bear doing in northern Idaho?

Ada was asleep by the time the latkes were cooked and on the table, but we offered her some today. Apparently I have the only child in the known universe who doesn't like fried potatos. She's spurned french fries, and now latkes. If she wasn't such a sweets and carbohydrates fiend I would really start to wonder whether she could be my child.