Our Hanukkah Celebration- It started with a Dreidal

At homeschool co-op this month we had an "International Christmas Party". Well for the most part it was for celebrating Christmas but we also had a segment about Israel and Hanukkah. My friend Juanita and I were in charge of decorating. We worked at having decorations to go along with the 4 highlighted countries which were Sweden, Mexico, Japan and Israel.  I saw some cute Paper Driedal decorations on Pinterest and so my girls made some for me to use at co-op. After co-op they came home and I checked out when Hanukkah was and since it was going on right then we hung them up.

  This is kind off one of those if you give a mouse a cookie sort of stories. :-) The afternoon that I hung them up was the last night of Hanukkah.

   After I hung the Driedals up I figured I should hang of the Star of David that had been a a craft at co-op.

We already had Ken's parents coming over for supper (there was a football game that the guys wanted to watch) and I had chicken out thawing. I figured I should make some traditional Hanukkah food. So I put the chicken into roast following a Jewish family recipe that I found online. It turned out delicious after being rubbed with olive oil, rosemary, thyme and garlic. I also figured we had better make Potato Latkes which my Jewish friend had said were needed for Hanukkah.  We tried this recipe which was completely delicious! I have tried them with wheat flour once and rice flour once - both were great. Then I figured we had better have the traditional cooked apples too - so we did.

 Megan said that if we were going to have a Hanukkah celebration we must have a menorah. I said: "Great, why don't you figure one out?" So she did. Jars, candles and ribbons where pressed into service.

 Then she announced that if we were going to have a menorah we would need to say a blessing while we lighted the candles. Great! Since we didn't know exactly what sort of blessing was supposed to be said at this time she said we could quote Psalm 100 together.

 Since we were celebrating Hanukkah, Ken's mom, Sharyl had fun telling us about the miracle of Hanukkah (the traditional story).

  All in all we had a great time, it was a super simple, spur of the moment celebration but one that will be remembered. The food was delicious (Sharyl also brought a salad which was wonderful if not traditional) and we had a fun time celebrating together.

  We may or may not celebrate Hanukkah again but it was fun this time. I do hope to make potato latkes many more times but not just at this time of year. Do you celebrate Hanukkah or any other Jewish holidays? I would love to hear about your celebrations.