If They Didn't Love this Thing....

I have such a love-hate relationship with our elf on the shelf.

(And remember, I was too cheap to buy a "real" one, we use an antique one that's been around forever.)

 

 

The kids love it. Love it. Love it.

 

I hate it since I can never remember to move the thing.

 

 

And I'm so tired of seeing pictures of elves taking marshmallow baths, fishing for goldfish crackers, and having sack races with other stuffed animals that I've vowed not to do anything I've seen a million times.

 

 

So, I've decided to put our Santa blackboard to good use and have Sam the elf leave them messages based on what we've been doing. So far so good.

 

 

My big plan for the elf was to not have him "appear" until after I got back from Houston.  That way I'd only have about two weeks worth of elving.

 

Sadly, my children awoke at 6:50 A.M. December 1st looking for the elf.

 

 

I heard them searching the house for him, calling for him. 

Oops. 

 

 

So I did what any good mom would do.

I totally blamed the no show of the elf on JR.

 

 

Thankfully, JR had had a spell of tween angst and had some kind of dramatic fit about something the night before.

I had Jason load them in the car for church while "Sam" wrote them a note about how he couldn't show up with such disrespectful behavior.

 

 

And that night, after a lovely angst free day, Sam did appear.

(Santa's usually holding a bell instead of an elf.)

So don't expect to see pictures of our elf taking a nap in a tissue box, but you will be able to see what's been going on around here lately.

 

Tomorrow: The elf and the geography bee

Some of Us went to Houston

Jason, Kyle, and I flew down to Houston for the weekend to attend Jason's work Christmas party.

 

Kyle didn't go to the party, he had his own little party with the grandparents.

 

We decided to take Kyle or Reed since JR is always getting to go on special trips.  Reed decided he'd stay in Denver with JR (and Granny Sherry) so Kyle was an only child for the weekend.

 

JR and Reed did stuff like this.

 

 

By the way, one kid is so easy!

 

 

We didn't do much, but in the short time we were there we were able to eat Mexican food twice. (Yay!)

 

And Kyle was able to score a new cat from Maw-Maw (he named him Snowflake).

Snowflake also "ate" lots of Mexican food.

Fashion Fabulous Friday

A full face mask with serious bad-guy eyebrows and mustache looks totally normal when it's -10.

(Let me say that again, -10.)

 

 

(Having a choir boy as a Christmas decoration on our front porch looks totally normal in all temperatures...since it was bought solely based on its resemblance to our eldest son.)

It's Cold

It's 8 degrees outside.

 

And it looks like this.

 

 

Luckily, the cat on my couch doesn't seem to mind.

They Might be Vikings

Granny Sherry's sister in law and niece (Joann and Terri) from Minnesota came to visit Sherry and see JR in Willy Wonka.

 

I'm so thankful for Sherry's Norwegian-ness since my kids got their pretty eye color out of it.

 

 

This picture has 3 100% Norwegians, 1 half, and 3 quarters. 
All with blue eyes and pretty much the same color hair...except for JR who got my dark hair.

(Thank goodness he has the blue eyes or I might have had to pull him from the picture.)

Ugliest Cake and Proud of It

You might remember how upset I was that Jason and JR didn't win the father/son cake bake last year at Cub Scouts.  (JR was fine, I was mad.)  It's here if you need a refresher.

 

 

JR hadn't been to Cub Scouts since September because of play practice, so I figured we better participate in the father/son cake bake since it was his first meeting back...even though Jason was out of town that entire week.

 

 

The rules are that they aren't supposed to get any help from mom, but let's be real, Jason's way better in the kitchen than I am, so me helping certainly wasn't going to give him any advantage!

 

 

We had just finished Willy Wonka, and with the outcome of last year, I wasn't interested in putting too much effort into this cake. 

 One of the categories was ugliest cake and I figured we could get one of those whipped out without much work.  I googled "ugly cake", found one that looked easy and that's what we went with.

 

 

In reality, I think JR did less work than Kyle and Reed.  They were really into the cake baking, and pretty much took over...and JR pretty much let them.

 

 

Here's the cake before the icing.  So easy it's scary.

 

We let it freeze overnight, then slapped some chocolate icing on the next night.  And if you've ever seen how "gentle" JR can be with things, then you know 'slapped' is the exact right word choice.

 

The eyes are crackers with white icing and the eye balls are tootsie rolls.

The tongue is a laughy taffy.

The guts are just crumbled up cake pieces mixed with icing.  The kids thought the red food coloring was awe-some. (Clearly I don't use food coloring with my kids on a regular basis.)

We went into the contest with zero expectations.  We hadn't put much work into it, but JR (and Kyle and Reed) thought the cake was the coolest thing ever, and we were happy to just have something to turn in.

Luckily for us, there wasn't much competition in the ugly category:

 

 

A toilet cake (which won last year, so that wasn't going to win again).

 Two kitty litter cakes (so those cancelled each other out). 

The other one look exactly the same, so no need for a picture.

Which left our only competition this knife and severed finger (the finger is a carrot) cake.

 

 

After the non-win of last year, I still wasn't sure he had a chance...even with such little competition.

 

But, he pulled out the win.

I'm not sure why they got red ribbons.  Guess that's all they had.

 

 

 The other winners were his friend from his class who won for best cub scout theme (it was my favorite cake).

 Best patriotic themed cakes was also the category for the kids who didn't follow directions and just made any old cake they wanted, which I guess is why R2D2 wound up the winner.

 

And best overall was the Pinewood Derby cake.

 

So there you have it.

A surprising win, but we'll take it.

Turkey in the Snow

Thanksgiving turned out to be a real turkey day!

 

 

First, the morning was spent skiing with a bunch of turkeys.

 (Jason, me, Kyle, Reed, JR, Anna, Emily, and Scott)

 

 

Ok, so maybe we didn't ski with turkeys, but they were definitely snowboarding.

 

 

Then Emily and Reed made us all turkey place cards.

 Granny Sherry drove up to Breckenridge to have Thanksgiving dinner with us, and we were all very thankful that Debbie did all the cooking. 

(I was thankful I didn't have to cook, and everyone else was thankful they didn't have to eat my cooking!)

 

I mean, just look.  Now that's a turkey!