חנוכה Chanukka 2009

In Hebrew, there is only one way to spell Chanukah, as opposed to English which has many different variations. Just one more advantage to living in Israel. We have just concluded our first Chanukah here in Israel. The kids were off of school the whole week, so we had a bit of a vacation (sort of). We tried to tone down the presents this year, and fortunately the kids didn’t seem to notice for the most part. I lit an oil channukia for the first time, which was kind of cool, although it kept going out. It was kind of like a reverse Chanukah miracle; I put enough oil in there to last 2 hours and it went out after 5 minutes. Hopefully I’ll figure it out before next year. Since the fist night of Chanukah was Shabbat, and it is our Tradition not to give presents when Chanukah coincides with Shabbat, we gave the kids large cardboard dreidels filled with candy. They were all pretty happy about that, although Ilan was the only one who actually saved some of it for later on. The kids all lit their own Channukias (except for Eitan) and they even said the brachot (blessings) before hand. Ilan said both and the girls did one. Tiki kind of scared us with her lighting, but fortunately she did not burn anything or anyone. For the most part, the kids were happy with their presents. There were a few disappointments initially, like when Ilan got an Incredibles costume and said that he wanted that for Purim not Chanukah. (he obviously felt that a present for Purim should not count as one of his Chanukah presents). However, by the next night, he was wearing the costume to a little Chanukah party that we had at my bother Jonny’s house. Jonny even made the latkes. Fortunately, Diane made the pizza. We all had a really nice time, and it was very special to light Chanukah candles in Israel with the other Brody family.

We ate a ton of greasy, oily, fried foods. Really unhealthy, but really good. Caryn made latkes, Sufganiyot (jelly donuts (although in our case without the jelly)), cookies, more cookies, pizza (of course), and lots of other yummy food. We all were feeling a bit sick to our stomachs. Gali informed us on Tuesday that she would be throwing up the next day, and sure enough on Wednesday evening she kept her promise.

We also took a few day trips during the holiday. On Sunday, Jonny took Caryn and the older three kids to some caves. They seemed to like it. On Monday, the whole family took the train to Tel Aviv. We went to the Azrielli Towers, which has a mall at the bottom. It was fun, but way too exhausting. I’m not sure why I thought it would be fun to go to a mall with four small kids. Anyway, we went to the top of the towers (49 stories), which was very cool, as we could see all of Tel Aviv. On Tuesday, we took the train to Jerusalem to the Biblical Zoo. It was a beautiful day, and we got a 50% discount for being new immigrants. Plus, the zoo train only costs 2 shekel a piece( about 53 cents). We had a lot of fun and stayed at the zoo for almost 5 hours. After the zoo, we walked to the Malcha mall, about 1 mile and a half away, up a hill (it looked a lot close on the map). We met the Zimands there, which is always a treat for us.
On Wednesday, Tiki had a fever, so I went with Ilan to the Old City of Jerusalem. I took him to the Western Wall, which he really liked, and we walked around the Old City walls, which was a lot of fun. We then went to Machane Yehudah (the open air market), and bought tons of candy and more Sufganiyot. We had a great father-son day.

Overall, it was a very nice Chanukah, and once again it was very special to be celebrating the Jewish holidays in Israel.