Happy Hannukah

At their school, Eddie and Luke both got to go to the "Holiday Shop." They each took $3 of their allowance and used it to buy Christmas presents for each other and Mom and Dad. It was a cute way to give them a little responsiblity, and the boys really enjoyed the gift giving. They were so excited, we had to open the gifts last night.

Luke was so excited, he could hardly keep the secret of what he got me.

"Dad, I'll give you a hint. It's two things in one," he proudly said.

So I guessed, "Is it a gumball with a liquid inside?"

"No, but keep guessing."

So I did, trying hard not to really guess the item so I could still be surprised. As it turned out, it was a combo tape measure, bubble level and keychain. So I told him, "Luke, it's three things in one!"

He snatched it out of my hands, examined it, and walked off with it enjoying "my" new tool.

Eddie and Luke both gave little Christmas tree ornaments to Becky. From Eddie, for Christmas no less, I got a bag of marbles and a dreidel! The dreidel is pretty cool. It's a real wooden dreidel with golden letters on it, and it only cost him $0.50. What a thrifty boy!

Eddie then gave Luke a stuffed snake plush animal, which was patterned like a jaguar. Luke liked the jaguar pattern, but was not otherwise really into snakes. Eddie then became sad that he didn't get the snake for himself. So Luke let him play with it. Luke, incidentally, got Eddie a green dreidel too.

The boys had fun with their gifts, and once Eddie calmed down about not getting the snake, we all enjoyed the toys very much.

This morning, Luke wanted to play with the dreidel, so I got onto eHow.com and we looked up how to play with the dreidel. We also had to look up the Hebrew alphabet, because we don't read Hebrew either.

There are four letters on the dreidel: shin, nun, gimel, and heh. But it's funny, my dreidel didn't have a shin on it. Only what looked like a peh. So I think I got a bum dreidel.

I instructed Luke to run up and grab my pocket change, and we divided it out and played a hearty game with the dreidel before I went to work.

Of course, I lost. I always do.