Fair(ly cold) weather friend

Sometimes I only get the chance to blog once a week. And since I can't always get up the motivation to think of a topic, it's nice to have other friends to blog with so we can take turns. I enjoy being challenged to write about stuff that might not normally come to mind and also reading everyone else's thoughts on the same topic. Blog Project 3.0 has been going on for about a year now, even though one of the group members changed after a few months. I love blogging with this group and I hope we can continue to inspire each other.

This week Moma Rock chose the topic: What are some of your favorite colder weather traditions?

First, read what everyone else had to share on this topic:
Darwin Shrugged
Froggie
Moma Rock

Our Sukkah a.k.a. The French Bistro

I absolutely love autumn. It's my favorite season. The nip in the air reminds me that it's time to start wearing long sleeves and even--gasp!--sweaters! This past week, we celebrated Sukkot. To me, it's no fun to eat in a sukkah unless the weather is brisk and you can truly enjoy a hot bowl of soup while sitting under the stars. (One year, Sukkot was during a particularly hot week and the heat just took away the feel from the holiday.)

Every autumn, my husband makes Journey's End soup at some point. It's this hearty vegetable soup that we would eat at this restaurant in Illinois that we enjoyed visiting frequently. Since the restaurant was called Journey's End, we naturally had to name the soup after it once we got the recipe and he replicated it perfectly. Of course, the experience is not complete without some oyster crackers.

In the past, we used to take trips to check out the fall colors. We haven't done it as often as we did in the past, but we need to start that tradition again. It's really hard to impress my kids when it comes to just being out in nature and if the leaves aren't in a pile to jump in, they could care less.

I tend to bake more in the winter, especially on snow days, when there's nothing better to do. I also love stocking up on Candy Cane Joe-Joe's at Trader Joe's. They're like Oreos with little pieces of peppermint in the cream filling. So so SO good! And no winter is complete without hot cocoa and mini-marshmallows.

YUM!!!

Our street during
Snowmageddon '10

Winter is usually mild out here and schools tend to close when there's barely an inch of snow on the ground. I prefer there to be enough snow to send my kids out to play and allow them to enjoy building snow castles, sledding down our hill, and having snowball fights. Sometimes I even join in. One year, we had an insane amount of snow here (a.k.a. Snowmageddon) and everything was closed for a week. We'd go to our neighbor's houses for meals or have them over here. It was a fun week of bonding, even though the kids got restless after a while during the day.

While we don't have any set-in-stone autumn/winter traditions, we do look forward to Thanksgiving and Hanukkah. (Of course, they were at the same time last year.) New Year's Eve is pretty low key, but we're happy to spend it with close friends who live nearby. I'm just looking forward to the simple pleasures of the season overall.

"So much fun-ukah to celebrate Hanukkah..."