Elf On The Shelf Daily Adventures

Last Christmas season we were joined by a new little friend, our Elf on the Shelf.  He didn't cause much of a stir last year so he spent the entire off season stocking up funny and wild ways to show us he was there everyday.  Here is a recap of all the fun we had with our Elf - the kids have been missing him and asking when he can come back.  

Day 1: Our Christmas Elf arrived yesterday from the North Pole. His first adventure was a tea party with Purple Baby.

Day 2: The Elf brings a message from Santa

Day 3: Our Elf needed a little help getting back to the North Pole last night after being touched by Ben yesterday. Santa was able to restore his magic and we're back on track!

Day 4: Christmas came early for The Cougars this year, welcome to Coach Leach! Win or lose even Santa and our Elf root for The Cougs!

Day 5: Our Christmas Elf is really checking up on us this year!

Day 6: Our Elf made a new friend! Now the question is who is the scariest?

Day 7: Our Elf and Jesse, the stuffed dog visiting us from Ben's class, enjoying some fun before Jesse returns to school.

Day 8: Perhaps our Elf needs us to leave him some food out since this morning we found him eating up all of Grandpa's fruitcake! Yum Yum! 

Day 9: Give an Elf a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach an Elf to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Yesterday McKenzie said the Elf should eat goldfish not fruitcake and this is what we found him doing this morning!

Day 10: Rub-A-Dub-Dub our Elf's in a tub! I'm just glad it wasn't my toothbrush he picked to clean up with.

Day 11: Today our Elf is just hanging around watching us run from one holiday event to the next!

Day 12: Looks like our Elf is trying to remind us about all the fun we have year round with our family. He's not the first one who has been a little jealous of our giant photo button from the fair!

Day 13: Our Elf in his cap has settled in for a long winter's nap!

Day 14: Their underwear were hung by the chimney with care... Wait a minute! Our Elf sure does have a sense of humor!

Day 15: Looks like our Elf decided to help address all our Christmas cards last night. Ben's comment was "He do your work Mama".  Anyone who does my work can stay all year long!

Day 16: All work and no play makes our Elf a dull boy. Enjoying some fun with Daddy's Xbox today.

Day 17: Today our Elf has some advise for the kids if they want to stay on the nice list.

Day 18: Step right up! You're the next contestant on 'Naughty or Nice?'. Our Elf is really taking his job seriously this year.

Day 19: Our Elf taking his new friend Barbie for a ride in his mistletoe mobile!

Day 20: Our Elf must be dreaming of a white Christmas to have cooked up this idea!

Day 21: Our Elf likes to keep us laughing, today we were all ready to help Santa pull his sleigh after waking up with red noses!

Day 22: Our Elf had an early Christmas gift for us today, he brought a photo album of all his adventures at our house. Perfect timing since it is Kenzie's day for show and tell at school. She is so excited to show her class.

Day 23: Our Elf is missing his friends in the North Pole. He got some inspiration from the Grinch to make himself feel more at home. "If I can't find a reindeer, I'll make one instead".

 

Day 24: A grand goodbye from our Elf today - a white Christmas after all . We pulled it off the tree and had a snowball fight! We will miss this little guy.

 

Naughty Is The New Nice

When I saw the Christmas card example with the tagline "Naughty Is The New Nice" I knew that summed up our 2011 pretty well.  The kids are not really truly naughty they just like to have fun, lots of fun that sometimes turns naughty when they stop listening.  We are very blessed to have kids that enjoy each other and run to hug after they have been apart but together they can also cause havoc very quickly.  I also thought getting a naughty picture would be much easier than getting a nice one - boy was I wrong.  It's nearly impossible to fake a naughty picture.  I guess I should have tried to take a good picture and then I'd have more naughty pictures than I could count.

In the end we got some cute ones of the kids and they thought Mom and Dad were losing it letting them goof off and act naughty.  We had our cards designed again this year by our friend Jess Caskey, who did a fantastic job of making my vision a reality.  I love having the cards designed by someone so I can change little elements to fit my needs.

Here is this years Christmas card for all to enjoy.  Remember even if you're naughty sometimes there is always room on the nice list if you work hard enough!

Oh Christmas Tree!

Last year McKenzie really got excited about helping me decorate the Christmas tree and this year was Ben's year to join in the fun.  While the kids lack some of the knowledge about best practices for putting ornaments on the tree they are overall very good helpers and love finding their perfect spot for each one.  Thought that might mean there were multiple ornaments on each branch within their reach on the tree.  It turned out beautifully as always and no one noticed that Mom moved a few around after bed time.

McKenzie finding the Christmas pickle - she loves to search for it each year.  It's like a real life "I Spy" book just for her.

Ben clowning around in the tree.  He insisted on standing on the stool to help decorate.  I'm just glad he didn't fall off and knock the tree over.

Silly kids clowning around by the tree!

McKenzie showing off her favorite ornament - a picture of her during her first Christmas.  And Ben's got his dog to show off.

Fruitcake Factory Open For Business

Once again McKenzie and I teamed up with Aunt Renee to produce our yearly batch of Grandma Hunter's Christmas Cakes, also known aa fruitcake.  We decided to make a single batch this year but it was still an overwhelming amount of fruitcakes.  Here's the first day when we chopped and mixed the fruit.  Things seem like they are going fine.

Then the next weekend we mixed the cake batter to blend with the fruit.  Classic fruitcake face from McKenzie!

Yes, folks this is only a single batch of fruitcake.  McKenzie couldn't believe Aunt Renee had bowls that big. 

Killing time while the fruitcakes baked.  McKenzie demanded we make her a paper hat.  Sadly after many failed attempts we had to look up how to make paper hats on the Internet.

Fruitcake hot out of the oven!  It was a great year, no sticking in the pans, no over cooking, everything seemed to come out just right.

 So far the reviews have been favorable.  Though my only real reviewer has been Ben. He ate it so it must be good, right?   Again this year he found the fruitcake and just helped himself.  Ben like to be just like Grandpa C, eating the fruitcake.

Reality Bites

Something fun we do year round is Skype with Grandma and Grandpa C.  Ben especially loves to talk with them on weekend mornings and it's so funny to see that he completely does not get that they are not really here with him.  He usually starts each conversation with asking Grandpa C to "picky me uppie" and both kids end the call hugging the computer.  Here is a recent picture that I had to take of the Skype conversation - Ben is actually trying to feed Grandma C a goldfish through the computer.  In his defense she is acting like she can really eat it.  

Love that technology lets us keep in touch even when we don't live right next door.  

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas...

We have been busy over the past few weeks with preparation for the holidays.  We have been checking off our standard holiday traditions and adding some new ones.  The kids are loving all the excitement of the holidays and seeing the decorations everywhere. My favorite is driving in the car after dark because both kids will shout out "I see Christmas lights!" almost continuously as we drive.  Ben also adds in the occasional, "Stop the car!  I want to look." just to keep things lively.

This year I've also been big on finding new ways to keep all the holiday decorations from becoming clutter.  My favorite so far is the Christmas card display idea that I found on Pinterest.  I wrapped an existing mirror in the dining room with some pretty yarn and then have been hanging my cards from the strands.  So far the cards this year have been few and far between.  This allows us to actually enjoy the cards rather than just having them scattered around.

This picture also captures the arrival of our Christmas Elf who visits us from December 1st until he heads back up to the North Pole on Christmas Eve.  He watches the kids and reports back to Santa if they have been naughty or nice.  Every night he flies back to the North Pole and then returns to hide somewhere new in our house.  I'll be doing a blog post about all the fun he's been up to later.

Another new event that we added this year was riding the Santa Train from North Bend to Snoqualmie to see Santa at the train depot.  The train was amazing, the age of the cars really told the story of how well things used to be built.  The kids loved riding the train and singing Christmas songs.  This picture shows the amazing old train and the kids in awe of how big it is.

Ben on the train with Jesse the pet dog from his class at school.  He got to visit us for a weekend and have lots of fun adventures with Ben that we wrote in a class book.

Kenzie and cousin Claire spent most of the train ride looking at the window telling us everything they saw.

Ben and Mommy snuggling to keep warm on the train.  Makes me appreciate that we don't have to rely on train service in these old cars to travel.  I cannot imagine taking a cross country trip with kids on an old train.

The three amigos with mixed emotions about their upcoming visit with Santa.  I took a whole series of photos where the girls expressions don't change much but Ben's face gets funnier and funnier.

Sitting on Santa's lap!  Kenzie told Santa what they wanted. Ben was very eager to get up onto Santa's lap and had to be restrained while the person before us went.  Then he seemed to want some alone time, or at least to not have Santa touch his hands.

An attempt at a family photo - again mixed emotions but Matt and I are happy so we'll go with it!

After the train ride back to North Bend we grabbed some lunch and Grandma and Grandpa Z met up with us to head out to find our Christmas trees.  We tried a new location out in Carnation this year and they had a great selection of trees.  Once again our eyes were far larger than our family room and we had to do some creative trimming to get the tree in but as always it's our best tree ever!

Classic shot of Ben helping Matt cut down the tree.

Here's Grandma and Grandpa Z and their whistling parade after the tree was cut down.  Every year Grandma Z brings whistles to the tree farm that get blown when the tree is cut down - the kids loved it!

Holidays are the best when filled with friends and family!

Thankful and Mostly Just Full

We had another great Thanksgiving weekend this year celebrating first at my sisters house with Grandma C's side of the extended family and then on Friday with Matt's family at Grandma and Grandpa Z's house.  It was nice to see everyone and catch up and continue family traditions and start new ones.

We had 29 people this year at Kacey's, just the the perfect amount to give everyone a little elbow room at the tables.  I am very thankful that as the kids get older it's easier to let them have a little more freedom so that Matt and I can actually talk to people instead of just chasing them around.  It's also nice to have older cousins like Nathan who is so nice to Ben and lets him think he's playing video games with him.  Someday he'll learn that you're not really playing if you're just staring at the buttons on the controller.

Here's the group from one end of the table to the other.  We wrote on the tablecloth like always and will be sewing it in sometime next year. After dinner we played some games then enjoyed something new - Minute To Win It games.  It was a great way to involve anyone and everyone in games.  We have more planned for the family Christmas party, should be fun!

On Friday at Grandma and Grandpa Z's house it was a smaller group of eleven for dinner.  When we first sat down to dinner Ben discovered that I had a butter knife on my bread plate which he thought was his bread plate.  He's not often allowed to use knives yet so this was very exciting to him.  He was so taken by this knife and wanted to show it to everyone and tell them how shiny it was.  The knife had to be taken away when it started being accompanied by light saber noises.

McKenzie and Claire also discovered something new to play with.  They found Grandma Z's hats and gloves and had a great time being fancy ladies practicing for their tea party that they are planning after Christmas with Grandma Z.

There is so much to be thankful for in our lives - healthy kids, a nice house, friends and family we love to spend time with.  We had a great weekend with our families and enjoyed two fantastic meals where we ate way too much but hey that's tradition right?