I'm jewish, so I don't celebrate Christmas. I celebrate Chanukah, which lasts 8 nights instead of 1. Here is exactly how I spent my Chanukah (Be warned, this turns out to be a pretty long post.):
Night 1) I went to a party with my family. Big crowd. A rabbi spoke a few words, but I didn't pay attention. He lit a giant menorah (candle holder for 9 candles) while my dad and I got into position near the food tables, so we'd be among the first to eat. I had 3 latkes (potatoe pancakes) and 3 half sufganiyot (jelly donuts). There was plenty for the entire crowd. I saw our friends Ben and Lexi from the home school group. It was all fun. Later we went home and lit our own little menorah.
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Night 2) I went to my grandparents' (mom's parents) house for dinner and fun. We had a nice quiet ceremony and lit the candles again. Grandma prepared us a lovely, simple dinner spread with plenty of latkes. This time I took 4. I think her latkes were better. We also played a fun game of dreidel. If you don't know the rules, it's where you spin a four sided top to collect pennies. There are four hebrew letters on these sides; Gimel for "Gimme all the pennies in the pile," Hay for "Hey, I get half the penny pile," Nun for "Nothing happens to me," and Shin for "Aw Shoot, I have to add a penny to the pile." Before we left, Annette, Adam and I all recieved $25 each in Chanukah gelt (which is yiddish for money). Oh, I forgot. Before we ever went to their house, I had a little chocolate gelt too.
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Night 3) Well, we didn't do anything too Chanukah related that night. Just had our semi-weekly pizza and movie night, that's all. The film we saw was High School Musical, but you probably already know that. But when we got home from the theater and had lit the candles, Adam and Shira surprised us twins with these cute mini-calenders. Annette got a butterfly themed calender (which is nice, but doesn't necessarily mean she loves lepodoptra) and I got an inspirational quotes and pictures calender. Now that was a cool gift. I don't think I could have picked a better calender for myself. If I can find them, maybe I can put all the pictures for each month up on my post. With the quote, of course.
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Night 4) Again, we didn't do much that had to do with Chanukah. All we did was light the menorah and sing the blessings, but you're supposed to do that every night anyway, so that was no fun. There wasn't any latkes or dreidel or even any surprise presents. It was just a normal, boring day. I was so restless. Certain online people knew it and comforted me with their comments. That warmed my heart to know I had friends like that. Hey, but you know what? I guess I sort of gave my own gift to my family. The gift of knowledge. The knowledge to create their own blogger account and post their own blogs. Adam and Annette caught on the quickest. Especially Annette. Watch out for her blog. (And by watch out, I don't mean avoid her or beware or anything like that. Just keep an eye out for her is all.)
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Night 5) Well, I suppose this was a pretty normal night too, but I didn't feel too bad about it. It's cool that Christmas happened to coinside with Chanukah. I took a cool walk with my family around the nearby golf course, that was neat. I should do that more often. Annette and I brainstormed a little on a new Leslie and Kyle episode. You know, the sock puppets? After that we went to Block Buster and played Rock Band there. Really, not that much. Lit the candles and that was it.
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Night 6) Finally, a little back on track. I went to the home-school group and one of the moms brought some really delicious latkes. This time I didn't bother keeping track of how many I took. I also had plenty of ginger-bread cookies, which isn't Chanukah, but they were still yummy. Later I went to the book store Borders (see my other blog) and had a good time. I wanted to buy a scrapbook as a Chanukah gift, but I got too busy reading and ran out of time. When we got home and Benny was back from the beach, we lit candles for Shabbat as well as for Chanukah. I also got a big surprise from my best cyber-pal, regarding the look of my blogs. Don't they look awesome or what?! --------
Night 7) Today I did a lot of work, even on a weekend. While Shira and Benny went to the beach, Annette, Adam and I sat down and wrote a new script for our Leslie and Kyle sock-puppet show. We also filmed some of it. It's still a work in progress. Later Adam and I went biking to the supermarket and we bought potatoe chips. Hey, it's the closest to latkes we got tonight. After lighting candles, we saw an old rerun of SNL from 2005. Will Ferrel hosted. Pretty funny.
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Night 8) At last, we reach the final night of Chanukah. That'll be the last time we light the candles on the menorah. I spent a large part of the day at the beach with my family. (We go almost every weekend. One of the many benefits of living in South Florida.) We saw many friends and sang songs. I even went swimming, even though around this time it's pretty chilly and I stay out of the ocean. I can't really talk about cold though, seeing as I've never experienced winter in more northern states. I wish I could.
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And that's it. That was Bettina Katie Levy's Chanukah of 2008. I had a good time this year. Had plenty of latkes and spent lots of fun time with my loving family. I even recieved a couple presents. Nothing big, but pretty special. I wonder what next year will bring.
With 2009 approaching ever closer, (it's 2 hours away now) I thought I'd share some of my new year resolutions. That way since they're a little public I'll have a better chance of keeping them.
