Hanukkah

Last night was the first night of Hanukkah. We are not Jewish but I think it is a good thing to learn about other cultures and religions. It’s a way to show love and respect as we all deserve.

So as the kids ate latkes and challah, I read a book to them called “The Story of Hanukkah” by Norma Simon. The recipe we have for latkes came from a Hanukkah book I got at school when I was a little girl.

I introduced them to the song, “Hanukkah, O Hanukkah,” which I remember my brother’s elementary school class learning and singing on the radio many many years ago.

After we ate, we played dreidel with chocolate coins. Over the years we’ve collected so many dreidels, mostly plastic but my son has a wooden one.

My husband was given some dreidels when he did balloon sculptures for a Hanukkah celebration years ago and I think my son’s came from school.

Even in different religions we can find things we have in common, including celebrating miracles. Let’s please show love and respect to others. It’s the right thing to do.

There was lots of love shown in our family yesterday. Lots of hugs. People helping out. Jet even sang a song. "I love you. I love you... Mama."

I absolutely love it when we have good feelings in our home.

P.S. December 14 was also Monkey Day so there was some fun monkeying around going on. 

It's My Sausage Pizza Party, Girl

October 11 was National Sausage Pizza Day. Jet was a big helper putting cheese on our French bread sausage pizza.

I wished Nichole a Happy International Day of the Girl Child which was also that day.

It was also It's My Party Day so I was singing that song again.

Chop Suey Success

We haven't had much success with celebrating Chop Suey Day (August 29) in the past. Two years ago there was a power outage before I could make chop suey (though we did watch that scene from Flower Drum Song). Last year we didn't even celebrate it at all.

This year I was determined so I adapted a recipe for Vegetable Chop Suey from hillbillyhousewife.com and made it for my family. Mmmm, it hit the spot with me that night. Jet was a big fan, too.

We again listened to the song, "Chop Suey," from the movie, Flower Drum Song.

Submarine Day 2022

April 11 was National Submarine Day so we had meatball subs for dinner.

Jet helped me make buns using a Mel's Kitchen Cafe recipe for fluffy whole wheat dinner rolls. I think he was a little confused when I actually gave him permission to punch down the dough. Usually he likes to poke it on his own and especially when I don't want him to.

I used frozen meatballs but got a homemade marinara sauce recipe from Six Sisters' Stuff to put in the sub and put provolone cheese on top. Yumm. Then I tried a new recipe from Budget Bytes for bacon and spinach pasta with parmesan for a side dish. Also yumm.

I also put on "Yellow Submarine" by the Beatles and the Kingsmen singing "Louie Louie" to celebrate International Louie Louie Day, which is actually a holiday about that song. Yeah, I went around much of the day singing, "Louie Louie," unintelligibly.

National Junk Food Day 2021

Me: Happy Junk Food Day.

Nichole: Good. I had Nerds for breakfast.

 

Are you familiar with Cocomelon? It's for little kids. It's animated. They have lots of songs, nursery rhyme songs, and songs based on those tunes. Go do a search for it on YouTube. 

Cocomelon has become a thing in my home with my toddler and my older kids of course will watch with him. Sometimes they just watch and sometimes they will point out how certain things are not entirely accurate or mistakes that were made. That's what happens when older kids watch little kid shows.

Anyway... one of the songs is about how Mommy or Daddy sneak to the kitchen in the middle of the night to eat junk food and the other parent catches them. The things they eat are pizza, ice cream, donuts, and candy. Finally the kids catch both parents in the kitchen eating junk food so they all eat carrots together at the end.

Of course my family is creative in celebrating so the kids suggested for National Junk Food Day on July 21 that we eat all the things from that video. We ate some of them but not all. I did make edible playdough to go along with a board game we played as a family that evening. We needed something for sculpting.

Creativity is fun. Family time is fun.

Not Authentic? No Problem.

March 24 was National Cheesesteak Day. I don't worry about authentic a lot as long as I can celebrate and we can create good memories and traditions. I mean just look at National Cereal Day and the tradition of having cheese and pickle sandwiches that day- not so cereal authentic is it? So I knew for this holiday I wasn't going to get real real cheeseteaks and that didn't matter.

So I turned to Mel's Kitchen Cafe once again and adapted her french bread rolls to make buns. I also adapted her cheesesteak subs recipe to make ourselves cheesesteak sandwiches. They may not have been authentic but they were tasty. 

The buns turned out somewhat thin so the kids kept calling them breadsticks (thick breadsticks) and kept asking for the leftover breadsticks.

Jr. Jr. and Lucky ended up having a lot of fun with the "breadsticks" and even made a song.

 

Jr. Jr.: Super super breadsticks breadsticks breadsticks. Super super breadsticks breadsticks breadsticks breadsticks.

And I end it like this.

Super super breadstiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicks.

Chomp. 

On another note, I asked Nichole to help me with the dough. I had her punch it down when it was time. She was such a good helper. Bwah ha ha ha. (Especially look closely at that last picture)

Not authentic? No problem. Sometimes it's fun to see how creative you can get with the holidays.

Ginger Rogers' Birthday 2020

July 16 was Ginger Rogers' Birthday. The movie Shall We Dance? with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire has the song, "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off." You know the song. "Potato, potahto. Tomato, tomahto. Let's call the whole thing off." For dinner we had spaghetti with pasta sauce made from tomatoes... or tomahtoes.
Lucky decided to play hot potato... or potahto.

The kids started watching the movie, Shall We Dance? though they never made it to the "Potato, potahto. Tomato, tomahto" song.
Jr. stayed up to watch the movie, Goosebumps, with a ticket and got to drink "ginger" ale as well as eating popcorn. The ginger ale was my dad's suggestion.

Since it was also Personal Chef's Day, earlier in the day the kids made their own personal pizzas on tortillas.

Summer Reading

Library Summer reading programs are underway.
Orem Library had a virtual kickoff event this year (obviously). We were able to watch the event on Facebook that introduced the theme of "Around the World in 8 Weeks," including the traditional puppet show. Jet loves puppets.

Provo Library is doing their program virtually and their theme is "Imagine Your Story" so there has been a lot of fairy tale and folk tale type activities such as #provostorytrails where we go out for walks at local parks where they have parts of a story on signs along the trail. That way we get exercise and a story at the same time. So far we've read "The Elves and the Shoemaker," "The Nightingale," and a local story called "The Story of Utahna and Red Eagle."

Here are some of the other things we've done so far:
Make up your own recipe. Jeremy made enchiladas with his own sauce for himself and me.

Bake a treat for someone. Jr. and Nichole made cinnamon rolls for the family. I made chocolate depression cake, a recipe from Budget Bytes, and added fresh cut strawberries on top of mine.

Build a castle out of LEGOs. Lucky's had hidden gold inside.

Take home activities. We made a hot air balloon and passport.

We celebrated Australia Picnic Day (a couple months early) with a water balloon fight and egg on spoon races.

We've also had plenty of fun singing songs and reading books. We even listened to a Hungarian song about Winnie-the-Pooh or Micimackó as they call him in Hungary. And we do more fun things every day.