On the Fifth Night of Chanukah My True Love Gave to Me…
Actually we didn’t exchange presents tonight but we did start a new tradition of eating Chinese dinner. Since it’s Chanukah fried food is the order of the day, and Chinese seemed like a good candidate. So we took all the children, including KD and her friend S, to the Chinese buffet, which unfortunately was terrible. The only thing that was actually hot was the soup, but we had a good time together which was most important. 
After dinner we came home, lit the chanukiot, then played a game of Apples to Apples. We’ve never played it before, JA got it as a gift from KD last night. We all had some good laughs as some of the combinations ended up being quite funny. The idea is to create associations from the pile of cards in your hand with the subject card on the table. Lots of great reading, vocabulary and resoning occur durin the game, which makes it even better. If you’ve never played it, give it a try.
Today’s Mitzvah: Making your children a priority in your life. My dear husband, who had a work related crisis today, but chose to be there to see the children’s end of semester programs. I feel very fortunate that we have the opportunity to have Dad around for many of these moments that many fathers must miss. Jc being able to work at home really is a blessing and I am so thankful he is able to be here for those little, but important, moments in the children’s lives. Hopefully they will be able to look back when they are older and appreciate that fact dad was able to, and wanted to, be there for them at these times.