Happy Hanukkah to All

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah, everyone! Mark decorated the house while I was at work. When I got home, it looked quite festive with the banners hung on the wall, the menorahs on the mantle, and wrapped presents piled up on the table. Tonight Mark and I lit our menorahs, sang the three blessings for the first night, lit up the electric menorah in the front window, and lit the Shabbat candles. It was lovely, but a little empty without the kids here with us. Then we exchanged our first presents. Our big present tonight is the Wii game system. It is sitting on the table with a big blue bow on it! I don't think we'll set it up tonight, but once it's up and running (and I figure out how to use it), I hope to get some exercise with it. I might buy the Biggest Loser exercise game to play on it, but if not, I'll just do some bowling and tennis or whatever else is already in there. Mark plans to get the new Epic Mickey game for it next September. I also gave Mark a Roy Rogers/Dale Evans DVD, and he gave me a $25 gift card to Starbucks, which will not take long to use up after my walks in the mall!!

Hanukkah, like all Jewish holidays, is all about the food! LOL Usually tonight we would have delicious latkes and jelly donuts from Dunkin' Donuts. Not this year. I looked up the calories for the Dunkin' Donuts; that was pretty scary. I could maybe eat one jelly munchkin for 50 calories, and I think on Sunday night we will get them. Mark found some frozen broccoli latkes from the Dr. Praeger line. They have 80 calories each, so he is making me one latke. Along with that we are having the Hungry Girl Baja Taco Blitz with salad, as well as challah and wine since it's Friday night. I will only eat one bite of challah and about one ounce of wine, so that's a mere 50 calories. The salad will have about 100 calories tonight since I put only 1/8 of a cup, 60 calories, of grated parmesan cheese on top of the large plate of salad veggies. The Taco Blitz is 280 calories, so my total caloric intake today will be 1180. Wow, I'm sure that on past nights of Hanukkah that also coincided with Shabbat my calories may have far exceeded 4000 for the day, especially if four or five latkes with applesauce and one or two jelly-filled donuts were involved! I guess it is possible to celebrate the holiday and keep the calories low. This is something that I am learning.