Elf on the Shelf

I'm all about traditions, always have been, always will be. I also love starting new traditions. We have several Christmas traditions at our house. We always bake and decorate a birthday cake for Jesus. We even light candles and sing Happy Birthday! We stumbled upon another tradition a few years ago and it's just kind of stuck. About 4 years ago after Christmas Eve Mass, we were starving and I did not feel like cooking. I didn't realize how much stuff would be closed at dinner time. The only thing we found open was IHOP so we stopped in there. The people were so cheerful and the Eggnog pancakes were amazing! After that, we decided that we would always eat at IHOP on Christmas Eve. This year we started another new tradition. Since Bryson is almost 3, I thought that he would finally understand Christmas and Santa so we started doing the Elf on the Shelf. Bryson loved him! He named him Elfie and we had so much fun looking for him every morning. We started on December 1st. Elfie arrived in a marshmallow bath with powdered donuts for breakfast. Next year I think I'm going to go all out and do a full North Pole breakfast complete with hot chocolate, pancakes, powdered donuts, etc. Bryson didn't now what to think at first. He laughed about it, then sat down to eat his donuts while we read him the book and explained what the elf does. Each child has to choose a name for their elf and Bryson chose Elfie. Each night Elfie would go back home to the North Pole and report to Santa how Bryson had been that day. When he would come back, sometimes he would get into mischief, sometimes he would just land in a random place. There is one rule, children cannot touch the elf or he will lose his magic. Bryson did so good. He would even point at Elfie and say "I cannot touch him. He will be sad and lose his magic." Since Bryson had done such a good job not touching him all month, Santa sent a note back with Elfie on Christmas Eve that said he could play with Elfie all day and he would not lose his magic. Bryson was so excited! He carried that elf with him everywhere. I think the only time he put him down was to eat. He even fell asleep with Elfie. But on Christmas Eve when Santa came, he had to take Elfie back to the North Pole for the year. In the middle of the night, Bryson woke up crying "I need Elfie!" oh it broke my heart. I was thinking about just giving him the elf and not doing it again next year. But he went back to sleep and hasn't mentioned Elfie since. Maybe next year I should look for him a little stuffed elf that he can hold the whole month. Here are some fun pictures of what that silly elf did this month.

Day 1: Arrival and North Pole Breakfast.

 Day 2: Underwear on the tree.

 Day 3: Trying to steal Bryson's candy.

 Day 4: Reading the Gingerbread Man.

  Day 5: Rocking baby Jesus.

 

  Day 6: Riding on the reindeer.

  Day 7: Just hanging out in the kitchen light.

  Day 8: Elfie TP'd Bryson's bedroom!

 Day 9: Elfie brushed his teeth and left Bryson a little note on the bathroom mirror with toothpaste.

  Day 10: Hanging out on the ceiling fan.

  Day 11: Riding on the Santa train.

 Day 12: Working on his tan.

  Day 13: He tried to help put lights on the tree but got tangled up in them instead.

 Day14: I guess he got a little hungry.

 Day 15 (one of Bryson's favorites): He trapped Bryson in his room with tape!

  Day 16: Hanging out in our photo booth from our Christmas party.

 Day 17: He replaced all the stockings with underwear!

 Day 18: Just hanging out in our centerpiece.

 Day 19: Making snow angels out of sugar.

 Day 20 (another one of Bryson's favorites): Used a dry erase marker to draw a silly picture on Bryson's school picture.

Day 21: He tried to help clean up, but got sucked up in the vacuum instead.

 Day 22: He was taken hostage by Bryson's Toy Story friends.

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Day 23: Playing the guitar.

 Day 24: He covered our living room with snowflakes!

  I don't think Bryson wants him to go.

We had a lot of fun with this and it was a great way to get Bryson to wake up every morning. I tried to save the really good ideas for the weekends so Robert could see Bryson's reaction.  Some of our ideas came from Pinterest, some were our own ideas. I think now that I have done it for a year, we will get a little more creative next year.

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. Me and Bryson started off our morning at home watching the parade on T.V while Robert was playing football with his friends. Bryson loved watching the parade and was so excited to see Spiderman and the Sprout float with Chica and Nina and Star. He couldn't quit talking about the Chica float. After the parade, we headed over to Aunt Evelyn's for yummy Thanksgiving lunch. We had turkey, dressing, deviled eggs, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole and so much more! She also had a ton of yummy desserts. We left with a ton of leftovers. Since it was such a beautiful day, the boys got to enjoy an afternoon playing in the leaves in her backyard. They had a blast! After leaving her house, we headed to Lisa's to have Thanksgiving dinner with Robert's family. We enjoyed more turkey and dressing, deviled eggs and so much more! The desserts were also amazing and we left, yet again, with a ton of food. It was nice to not have to cook for a few days. We left Bryson with Lola so I could do a little Black Friday shopping and Robert could go into work for a few hours. I scored a ton of good deals! At most stores I saved more than I spent! I thought I was going to be disappointed since I didn't really see anything in the ads but I love to go Black Friday shopping so I went anyway. I'm so glad I did because I found a ton of stuff that I didn't even see in the ads. We spent the rest of the weekend decorating the house for Christmas and watching Auburn lose in the Iron Bowl (shocking!). Bryson loved putting all the decorations up on the tree. He couldn't quit talking about putting the star on top of the tree. I'm so glad that he's as excited about Christmas this year as I am.

Halloween

This year Halloween was all about Angry Birds. It all started with costume shopping. We went to three different stores and let Bryson choose his costume. In all three stores he chose the Angry Bird costume. At Party City we had him try on a Spiderman costume since he loves Spiderman, hoping that he would choose that, but nope. He insisted on the Angry Bird costume, so we got it! When it was time to carve our pumpkin, he, once again, chose Angry Birds. He took his time looking at all the pattern choices and finally decided on the Bad Piggies one. He wasn't very interested in helping or touching the insides but he loved it when it was finished!

At school, we had a costume parade. Bryson had so much fun walking around with his class getting all kinds of treats.

 We got an early start with our Trick or Treating. Publix always does something fun for the kids so we met Robbie, Martha, and Will there at 4pm. The boys got to play games, get candy and make their own cookie. They both had a lot of fun. I think they enjoyed playing with the ATM outside more though.

Then we went to Walgreens to get a free Halloween picture, then headed to Robbie and Martha's neighborhood to start trick or treating!

Once we finished their neighborhood, Robert was home from work so we headed to our neighborhood. It was total madness! I guess since there are so many houses, people drove to our neighborhood to trick or treat. We saw a ton of cars parked in one of the empty lots. I have never seen that many kids in our neighborhood before. Since Martha's sister Katy lives around the corner, we had to stop there and the boys wanted to play their piano again. I think that may become a yearly tradition.

When we were finally done trick or treating, we headed over to Lisa's to have dinner with Robert's family. Bryson had such an amazing Halloween! He was actually sad when it was over. When I packed up all our Halloween decorations he cried!