We are celebrating Hanukkah this year instead of Christmas because that is what Jesus celebrated and because we want to stress the gift of Jesus dying for us more than when he was born. So far not so good. Last night we explained the story (to a 4 and 2 year old) and looked at our new Menorah. Of course the candles that I was promised would be here aren't yet. I may leave my first negative feedback on ebay because of it. We lit a different candle. Then we each opened a small present. They each got a set of color wonder fingerpaints (and proceeded to paint a bunch of them) while DH got "yellow arrows" (a waymarking itme he wanted) and I got some stamping stuff. We explained tha twe are giving them a gift because all of God's miracles are a gift to us. This morning we had a special breakfast, chocolate donuts, (that are never in the house usually) and we put up a "candle" in our cardboard menorah (one for each) Wow behind the candle was a small piece of chocolate wrapped in gold. The kids were thrilled. After schoolwork we made our first Hanukkah decoration. I wrote Happy Hanukkah and drew a 6 pointed star on a piece of cardboard with glitter glue while they colored and cut out (I moved the paper for the 2 year old) stars that we decorated with more glitter glue. When they dry we are going to hang the stars from the sign and put it up. We also delivered a present to the first of 8 people we chose to be our "Hanukkah present people."
We know we arent' following th eactual traditions perfectly but we are combining some of them while we build new ones and try to stress the family fun rather than the gifts. Tonight we plan on playing the dreidal game, so I'll blog about that tomorrow.