Hanukkah

Today is the 7th night of Hanukkah. Mark is asleep and all is quiet. Every night this week Chris reads him a little story from Mark's first Hanukkah book. One story was about latkes and miracles. Another one was about space aliens. Tonight's one is about a parrot named "Dreidel". Also, we decorated a small potted rosemary plant and put blue and white garlands around our kitchen light. And yesterday, while my parents were here, Mom and I cooked some traditional Hanukkah food - a brisket, a kugel, and some fried sweet doughnuts (although they weren't really doughnuts, but pirozhki). And of course, we light a menorah every evening. The only thing we don't have this year is a little dreidel for Mark. It's really hard to find it in Raleigh, NC. Plus Mark is really too little yet. But next year, sure thing, dude!

So yeah, my parents were here this weekend. As usual it was a lot of fun and a lot of food. Mostly the food that they brought from NY. Yet again I failed to pursuade them that yes, Raleigh is the land of plenty and that no, we're not starving ourselves. Fortunately, the weather was really nice - in the 70's - the entire weekend and we went on long walks. Like today Chris and I and Mark walked all around the lake to burn some of the food calories off. And then we went for some ice-cream, hehe. Yesterday we also went to the lake. But also I took parents to the flea market. I love our flea market - there's so much stuff there. Dad didn't care much for it though since a) they don't sell any cheap airplanes there and b) as he put it "it was all mostly junk". But hey, isn't that the whole point of a flea-market?

I almost forgot about last Friday though. Guess what?! I got to see Rachel Ray and she even signed a book for me and Chris. She was doing book signing at our local B&N. Chris went there early on Friday morning to get a ticket (since it was a free signing, but they limited the number of people to "only" 350). Rachel Ray was to arrive at 7pm. We went to the store at 6:30 only to find out that since my ticket was #331, it'd take at least a couple of hours. So we went home for a while. Finally, around 9:30pm Mom and I went back to the store leaving Mark and Chris at home. It was absolutely crazy! We were actually next to the last people in line, so we didn't get to Rachel Ray until about 11pm. But as a reward, I got not only a personalized and autographed book of hers, but a picture with her as well.