Gettin' Jewwy Wit It

I've got a lot of catching up to do. I've got tons and tons of great pictures to post, so it'll take awhile . . . but hopefully I'll be caught up by next week. So here's a start to the holiday recap . . .

Okay, I know. The title of this post is unforgiveable. It kind of takes me back to my Senior Thesis class in college . . . we were reading The Merchant of Venice and we had to do an in-class exercise. We had to come up with a title for a paper about Shylock (a Jewish character) and religion in the play. I came up with "The Thin Jew Line." You think that's bad, the guy next to me came up with "How Jew Doin'?" At least mine made some sense . . . but I digress.

Okay, so we're not Jewish. But my brother Nathan thought it would be fun to play Dreidel in honor of the Hanukkah. And, just a note. The hobby stores in Chattanooga are AWFUL. One store hung up on my brother when he asked if they had any Hanukkah stuff. He had to get some from a rabbi. And I thought being a Mormon in the bible belt was rough . . .

Anyway, John and I played with Nathan, Mari and their girls, Annie and Caroline. If you haven't played Dreidel before, it's tons of fun. Basically, you start with piles of candy and you spin the four-sided top (the dreidel). How much candy you win (or lose) depends on what symbol you land on . . . Nun: nothing happens and the next player spins; Gimel: the player takes the entire pot; Hey: the player takes half of the pot; Shin: the player puts two markers in the pot. We redistributed the candy often, to make it a little more fair for the girls. Traditionally it's played with gelt, or coins (or a lot of times, chocolate gelt), but we played with fun size candy bars. Annie wound up winning the pot, and as you can see below, she was pretty psyched about it.


Here's Charlie with his Reese's peanut butter cup yarmulke! He was feeling festive . . .

GIMEL!

Oh, and one final hilarious note. Nathan also brought a smoked makerel. The Polish eat those at Christmas (Nathan went to Polish-speaking Chicago on his mission - he was feeling nostalgic). My niece Morgan was absolutely horrified by the thing. So Nathan decided to do what any caring uncle would do. He cut the fish's head off and left a note for Morgan in its mouth.

Well, until next time, l'chayim!