Holiday week!

This is a very odd week. R has Wed and Thurs off, but works the rest of the week. My plan for the boys is to make cookies for their teachers/staff at preschool (I forget offhand how many) but I hoped to give each one a dozen cookies (comprised of two different ones). We'll see how far we get today, and do the rest tomorrow. Yesterday I think for every dozen we made, at least 4 got eaten-with four people in the house who could reach the cooling trays, you can imagine how many were grabbed! It was a lot of fun, and R snapped some pictures of me cooking with the boys. My new mixer works like a dream, I didn't get to use it as much last year since I got it for Hanukkah (and after I had already done most my big baking), but this year, I'm getting a lot of use from it.

Last night we lit the first Hanukkah candle on the menorah. I placed it in our front window-the boys didn't touch it, so that made it easy to put it there. We watched the Rug Rat special I had on video about Hanukkah and the boys seemed to like it. While watching Sprout this morning, I saw a neat idea on fingerpainting a menorah, so we'll try that this afternoon. I also have a few more holiday videos, and I need to go by the library and see if I can find the Hanukkah book that I borrowed last year. I also am going to try and make latkes, but I think I may need to hit up one of the specialty stores and see if they sell frozen ones-just in case I can't pull it off. I wish I paid more attention when my mom and grandma made them, but I'll learn as I go. I also have dreidels too, and will probably take those out later this week. I have a ton of other stuff ready for playtime, but I'm going to use my judgement and only take out what I think the boys will play with. No need to take out everything when they're happiest playing with the small stuff.

This week really is off to a great start, and I want to soak it all up. I love how the boys are older, and I can continue the traditions I had growing up, as well as continue the ones I started with M when he was a baby. Later this week, we'll add the traditions that R had growing up with Christmas, and continue the ones we started w/ M when he was a baby too. Lots of holidays, lots of fun, lots of laughter, but little stress. Gotta love that!