1 night vs. 8 nights

We have come to realize that opening one present every night of Hanukkah is total joke in our house.  There is a lot of pressure to get 8 really good gifts for three kids! You know, if you get to open a bunch of presents all at once, even if you don't like something, you have all these other things to make up for it, or a bunch of little things add up to be something good----this doesn't happen when you just open ONE (and then have all these other presents just starring at you!).  Plus, we also do stockings and one big present on Christmas morning. On top of that, it is inevitable that someone will be disappointed in the one gift they chose that night, and compare it to their brothers and say they got something better. And then, we get into the whole conversation of "can I just open one more?!?!?" which will then throw us off for the rest of the days and everyone else will also want to open just one more present. Then someone starts crying because we say no. Then I am irritated and feeling like I am raising spoiled brats.  Then the night is not fun anymore, and I tell Blaine I am cancelling Hanukkah indefinitely. It happens.

We gave it a good college try the first night just to see how it panned our this year. We actually went to our cousins house for the first night and did our annual cousins gift exchange and Latkepalooza party.

No one was thrilled with their gift, but it all seemed to be OK.  Until we got home. Then......

Just as suspected. It all started.

I was so frustrated that I honestly wanted to cancel Hanukkah all together.  They were acting like spoiled little kids. Not the kind of boys we are trying to raise.

So Blaine and I made the decision that we were going to wait until the 3rd night and just have one big-open all your presents-night of Hanukkah and continue to light the menorah every night .  Ethan and Rachel came over, we had dinner, lit the menorah and had a present-fest. It was a lot of fun! My mom had knee surgery the week before. We normally would go over there and do a big night with them and my grandmother, but this year it just wasn't going to happen like it has in the past.  But we did have plans to celebrate with them one night later in the week.

Success!!!!

We still had really nice evenings of dinner and lighting the candles together the rest of the week, and of course, there was still Christmas to look forward to!