This year was the first time with the kids that Hanukkah ended up being observed all in Philadelphia.
Because of how it moves around on the Gregorian calendar, there is always a chance that we’ll be spending part or all of Hanukkah in Philadelphia over the winter school break. It presented an interesting challenge, how do we give the big gifts like their new bikes if the bikes are in California during Hanukkah? And for smaller things, do we just plan on bringing a bunch of gifts home instead of keeping them at our vacation home? We got creative, and brought along an extra suitcase just in case we ended up bringing things home (we did!).
Now, one of the things about winter break is that the kids are home from school, so we revisited our summer strategies of keeping them occupied. During this two and a half week trip, our au pair also decided to take some much deserved vacation over New Years and so that left us with most of Hanukkah just the four of us, and nearby family. This year it began on the evening of Christmas, and with most things closed the boys and I got to work on making a bunch of sugar cookies from my family recipe. We quickly discovered that we don’t own a rolling pin (our supplies are rather limited there) so we used a water bottle. The cookies came out great, I forgot how much I like them. I ate a bunch.
For dinner MJ and I got Wawa hoagies and I tried my hand at making latkes. We purchased a food processor a few days before so I wouldn’t have to manually shred potatoes and onions like I did last time when I made them in California. What I didn’t think about much was oil, so I just used what I had: vegetable oil. I came to regret that decision. Turns out, using vegetable oil for latkes makes them cook much too quickly and I ended up with burned latkes, only a few of them were even edible. It also filled the house with an oil smell that lasted for hours. Thankfully, my second attempt at the tail end of Hanukkah was much more successful with Canola oil and lots of ventilation.
Also, we discovered that Aaron loves latkes.
We did some Hanukkah crafts, including a table runner that the boys enjoyed coloring and putting up some small lights around the house.
The boys fell in love with sparklers over the summer, so I joked about and then produced “Hanukkah sparklers” which we played with in the snow on the second night, which is also the night they were treated by grandpa coming over and doing gifts with them. This year we also gave Adam the opportunity to help with candles, which he was really excited about.
Of course the Hanukkah train came out too! The boys are treated with year-around trains in Philly now that we have a Lego train that we put together over the summer, so we temporarily put that one away so we could enjoy the more traditional model train.
Next year there’s a good chance we’ll be splitting Hanukkah between coasts, so that will be an interesting one!