Famille Du Pentium

So first, some business… in case you’re wondering why all the Hanukkah pictures are of the kids with their toys, well that’s why I set up the photo gallery.  So that people who sent or left gifts can see the kids opening and enjoying them.

If you’re one of those waiting to see the pictures of your present:  http://gallery.famille.org

Oh yeah, the answer to today’s trivia: "How many nights will we light Hanukkah candles in 2006?"  And the answer is: Nine.  Bet you didn’t see that coming!  

We will light candles on January 1, 2006 (the eighth night of this year’s Hanukkah) and eight nights starting December 15, 2006.

Heh I just thought of this last night as I was driving between Skokie and Naperville. 

 How many nights will we light Hanukkah canldes in 2006?

The answer will be posted later… 

So we did it.  We broke down and let Aaron open his "big" gift from us.  I must admit that I’ve had reservations since it was circled on a Toys R Us flyer for me to buy on Black Friday.  But now, the deed is done and there’s no going back.

 Aaron has a drumset.

On the upside, he’s going to spend the night at Matthews tonight.  🙂  That’ll give us time to put it together.  Yeah.  I’m psyched. 

 Ethan has begun associating lighting candles with getting gifts.  That’s not entirely a bad thing, but hopefully he begins to understand the meaning of Hanukkah soon.  Aaron sure does.  I think Justin is just having fun having me around the house all the time.

Well, Happy Hanukkah, it looks like Marla almost has the drum set together, soon it’s time to pack up the kids and head out to Naperville.

 Oh yeah, pictures this time… http://gallery.famille.org .

Had to skip pictures tonight.  Partly, I forgot and left my camera in my coat pocket.  The other part is, it was just stuff we bought each other, so nobody should be looking for "their" gift. 

 So, catching up…

Aaron and Matthew had a great time together the last couple of days.  I think they played video games most of the time.  Aaron had written out a schedule, and he and Matthew followed it closely.  Mostly, it consisted of "Play Video Games".  Aaron has this new video game whereby the object is to crash your race car and cause as much monetary damage as possible.  It actually rates the value of each object you hit, or cause to crash, and you get more money for causing more damage.  Lots fun.

I’m playing Shadow, the newest in the Sonic franchise.  I also have been playing "Sonic Collection", which is a bunch of games going back to 1991.  So between the two, it’s amazing to see how far the Sonic franchise has come in thes years. 

First, if you want the pictures, go to http://www.famille.org/gallery .

Tonight we went to Marla’s cousin’s house for their Hanukkah party.  The kids made a mess, but then made desert. 

Matthew stayed over to visit Aaron.  He’s quite excited.

Sorry this is short but everyone seems to want my attention today.

Here’s some musings from today.

 First, after putting unpacking my kids presents from yesterday, I am convinced that global toy companies are completely disfunctional.  Every component in every box is "wired" (literally) to the back of the box.  What ever happened to the days when they just put the damn toy in the box?

Heres some lovely pictures of our evening.  First, I know Bubbe is waiting to see this one. 

Next, Aaron opens his gift:

That’s Ethan in a yarmulke and underwear.  Sigh.

More to come. 

So a bit of administratia first, those of you who know me can skip over the next paragraph.

 This blog will be a mix of stories about my kids, travels, technical articles, and other rantings, in no particular order.  Right now it’s Hanukkah, so I’m going to post about that.  most times you’ll have to bear through parent-like dotting over my kids.  If you find that sappy, you might want to just skip over those parts.  Other people reading this blog will appreciate it.

So here’s Hanukkah at the Humphries-Dolnick household.  On Monday, we had everyone from Marla’s family over for our annual Hanukkah party.  It’s also the annual sisters-get-together-and-exchange-gifts.  The two parties are not always the same – sometimes the Hanukkah party cycles to Marla’s parents or (Hanukkah-observing) sister.  The annual gift party is related to the holiday season, but since one sister doesn’t formally celebrate Hanukkah, they’re not always the same.  This year it was. 

So we ended up with six kids and eight adults in the house.  Eeyore was at a friends house.  Marla made fairly quick work of the Latkes earlier in the day with the spiffy new food processor I bought her.  She’s quite happy with it, she used to hand grate potatos, onions, and carrots for the Latkes and now it takes half an hour with the food processor for enough latkes for all 14 people. 

There was the usual family festivities, dinner,  candle lighting, and then the present opening started.  This is always quite an event.  In theory, each child opening two or three select presents that evening shouldn’t seem like a big deal.  But remember that we have six kids in the house.  We have signs on the wall with each childs name, and a pile of presents underneath the signs.  (Don’t forget, besides the "two or three" designated presents they get to open, each sister rbings over a pile of presents for each kid too). 

So my job is to have the kids line up on the floor in front of me and wait while I pull gifts off their piles and hand them to them.   Sounds simple enough, eh?  Things degrade quickly as parents can’t keep up with the presents,  and the kids want to actually *open* the boxes that they’ve just unwrapped.  To keep them from doing this, I hand them more presents, faster, to divert their attention away from the actual contents of the presents themselves, lest they think about opening the boxes and then there would be a huge disaster. 

 Well, I’ve gone about as far as I can go with this entry.  On to day 3.

So the big question you’re asking yourself is, what in the hell was I doing going to www.famille.org?  And, once you got here, the big question is, why did it switch to a blog format?

 This is mostly what I’ve wanted to do with famille.org for a long time.  Rant.  Rave.  Complain.  Tell you that if you don’t like it, you can go away.  The other stuff is still there, like kellystravels.famille.org and the pictures I publish to unlinked pages.  But the main page is now this.

 Comments are welcome, and if any family members want to become posters, let me know and I’ll set you up.