No Disney World New Year’s, or watching Navy Pier fireworks from a suite at the Swisshotel.  This year, we’re going to plant ourselves firmly in front of the new 42" Plasma and watch it all in living color in our family room.

We’ve got a nice Ice Wine to ring in the new year, and a half dozen cheeses and meats to snack on until the ball drops.  Then, we’ll probably just go to bed and sleep late on Tuesday.

We here at FAMILLE.ORG hope that you and your family have a safe, happy, and profitable new year. 

Michael Klein was the father killed in the terrible small plane crash in the Panamanian jungle earlier this week.  Mr. Klein founded a company called eGroups many years ago, which was later purchased by Yahoo and renamed Yahoo Groups.  Yahoo Groups (and before its purchase, eGroups) hosts the family humor e-mail address, "famille-humor" (I won’t put the full address in, to save everyone some spam).

The definitive ballad singer / songwriter of the 1970’s and ’80’s, Dan Folgelberg, died today.  His emotional songs "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne" were chart-toppers that had everyone singing in their cars whenever they played on the radio.  Leader of the Band was actually about his own father, who actually was a bandleader. 

Folgelberg died of prostrate cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2004, at the age of 56. 

As promised, today I spent some time doing an activity with the kids… we made Hanukkah cookies.  These were basically store-bought cookies so no presumptuous "made from scratch" here… just a good time mixing, baking, frosting, and painting them.  Pictures are HERE.  Give an hour or so from now (5:30 PM CST) for the upload to complete.

Speaking of pictures, you can review all of the Hanukkah 2007 pictures HERE.

So as the sun is setting now, Hanukkah 2007 has come to an end, and we now will have to muddle through another Chicago winter and look forward to Pesach, when the snow melts and we start to come out of hibernation.   

Hanukkah Day 8 has begun.  I had grand plans to do some Hanukkah activities with the kids, but both Aaron and I caught a stomach flu.  And then Justin nearly caught the kitchen on fire.  But flammable cheesy noodles aside, we still lit candles (maybe it will get rid of the smell?) and had the kids open their remaining presents. 

Tomorrow is still Hanukkah and if I can stay out of the bathroom long enough, I think I’ll try some activities with the kids again.  Meanwhile, here are some pictures to look at. 

Boy, we’ve got some catching up to do, gift-wise.  The carrot-and-stick of clean-up your room to get presents works fine for Aaron, but isn’t working out so well for Ethan and Justin.  They made great progress earlier this week, but now they aren’t budging. 

I know some of you out there (Mom) are waiting to see the presents you ordered them, so we let them open a couple tonight.  

Also, we got some very odd Soda Pop from UPS today.  I assume this is the package that my brother promised was on the way.  The applesauce, chocolate, and jelly donut flavored sodas sound like fun, but I’m not too sure about drinking Potato-flavored soda.  Eh, whatever, I’ve eaten in some pretty weird places, I’ll try anything once.

Once again, you know the drill – the pictures are here if you want ’em.  

One more night to go 🙁 

Today, Aaron when on his second Orienteering expedition.  A little off-topic, I know, but he’s very excited about this new activity and has acheived some level of accomplishment in it – his second outing and he’s an Intermediate Orienteer, according to the local Chicago chapter of the club that tracks these things. 

Orienteering is about finding your way around the forest.  Spelunking, basically.  With a map.  You meet a lot of military people because it’s a skill they drill into you in the military.  I think it’s good for him to get some exposure to that sort of attitude and mentality.

Anyway, right… Hanukkah.  Day 6.  We lit candles.  There was no party, and we ate turkey sandwiches for dinner then most of us (except me, who’s writing this now at 9 PM) went to bed due to the afformentioned Orienteering outing tuckering us out.   Pictures are here, see you tomorrow.

I love this part.

LATKES!

Tonight was the big Dolnick family Channukah party.  Candles, dreidles, presents, and of course lots and lots of Latkes.  We also hooked up the PS3 to the HDTV for the first time today, and that kept Aaron busy with his older cousin for several hours.  The picture on this T.V. is amazing.  Marla got me some Blu-Ray movies, so we can see pure end-to-end Hi Def movies now.  Absolutely stunning.  It’s pretty hard to take pictures of T.V. pictures, so the out-of-town readers will just have to come over to our house sometime to experience it.  Or buy your own :).

Justin, the trooper kept up with his older cousins as long as he could, then he crawled behind Marla’s back on the couch and fell asleep about 7:00 PM.   

Ethan played with Alyson for hours in the living room and his room.  He had made progress on the clean-up; I haven’t been in there yet tonight but I’m sure he’ll have a lot more work to do as he has a tendancy to take thing out and leave them on the floor.  

In any case, a fun time was had by all and now it’s time to upload many, many pictures.  That link should work now, but the pictures won’t actually be there for several hours.  

More tomorrow.  Good night. 

We were a bit late lighting tonight, we had an event to attend prior to sundown.  But the show, as they say, goes on … just as it has for 2000 years. 

Today Ethan and Justin actually  made progress on their room… I should post some "after" shots sometime (before shots are here).  Ethan, Justin, and Aaron all had one present, to all of them, from their cousins Renee, Seth, Shana, and Yakov.  So since they all got to open a present today, they opened that one together.  I don’t know where they found it, but the kids actually got a "snoopy snow cone machine".  I had one of these when I was a kid.  I didn’t know they still made them.  But there it is, in all it’s glory. 

Mike got "Blazing Saddles" on BluRay (a new toy for the family – a PlayStation 3 and 42" Plasma HDTV…) so we know what I’ll be doing tomorrow (setting up the TV and PS3…) 

The pictures are all HERE, enjoy.  Tomorrow is the party.

Time to light the third candle.  I love Channukah, it’s one of the few times per year I can spend a lot of time with my family.  We light candles, which adds a warm glow to the house, and then we sit around and talk – like humans – about our day, what we did, etc.  Then we sit down (together) for a big meal. 

Or sometimes, like tonight, hamburgers and hot dogs from Poochies. 🙂

OK, as promised, pictures:

Day 1 & 2

Day 3 (Today)

Also for those of you who want to know more about this huge mess of toys that the kids have, see here.  Aaron’s room is actually much cleaner since he started cleaning up, and he earned one new present today (Star Wars Battlefront II).  Ethan and Justin are still testing the waters to see if we’ll really withhold Hannukah presents from them.  Hey, when Marla’s parents were kids, they got socks and school supplies for Hannukah.  Maybe we’ll give them some. 🙂