Hanukkah Donuts and Christmas Trees

We love to do it all! We've been celebrating Hanukkah this week - lighting our menorahs, baking and decorating cookies, playing with dreidels...and on Thursday evening we had friends over for dinner. This was the first dinner party we've hosted in our new home (aside from Thanksgiving, but mom did the cooking for that!) and Jason decided he was going to be the chef. He really outdid himself, too - not only did he roast a chicken and make latkes from scratch, but he also made donuts - yes, DONUTS - from scratch and they turned out completely delicious. Fluffy, light and tasty and they looked gorgeous as well. Here are a few shots of him cutting them out, frying them and icing them. Yummy!!! (Also notice him wearing my apron. I guess Santa better give him back his manhood - and maybe a white chef's apron - for Christmas!)

Unfortunately we did not take any pictures of the dinner or of our friends, because we were all so busy trying to eat and wrangle our own three boys as well as the other three children (two two-year olds and another infant) who came with their parents. But a great time was had by all.

Other exciting adventures...Jason took Logan ice skating at a local rink last weekend. They had fun, although it didn't last long. The rink offers lessons for kids Logan's age so we're considering entering him in January but we'll have to wait until then and gauge his interest a little better.

This morning Jason had planned to take Logan out to cut down a Christmas tree - the local forest service, in an effort to combat the pine bark beetle infestation in our mountain forests, set up a program giving away free trees to anyone who would come cut them down (within a designated area, of course). But it snowed overnight and was snowing all day today, and when they got to the site the rangers turned them back because of the road conditions. So, taking advantage of a miraculous window in which none of our children were napping, eating or throwing a tantrum, we loaded the family up in the car for a snowy cross-town outing to a small local eatery and then to the hardware store to buy a tree. Instead of the free tree we'd planned on, we ended up spending a small fortune on a 10-foot tall farmed Frasier fir ("but Jason, it's beautiful and our ceilings in the living room are tall so we need a big tree!"). Right now it's drying off in our garage...when we put it up and decorate it tomorrow we'll post some pictures.