You Better Watch Out

So are you sick of my elf yet?

Good thing there's less than a week to Christmas!

 

So, the kids love this elf so much we've had to start taking it places.

And since they can't touch him, "we" means, I've had to start packing an elf around almost everywhere I go.

 

Thankfully Scott and Debbie are great friends, so I wasn't totally embarrassed when I showed up with an elf in my pocket for dinner because Kyle and Reed wanted Sam to see "how good Anna and Emily are".

 

 

I've also been having to take him to hockey games.

(That's Kyle as goalie and Reed playing defense.)

Kyle was thrilled the other night when a kid knocked him down.  Kyle said, "Sam saw the whole thing! That kid is on the naughty list and getting coal! He didn't know I had my elf here watching and now he's in trouble."

Wonderful. On top of everything else our elf is now monitoring the behavior of other children in public places.

 

 

I figure the elf has been to enough hockey games now (at least 4) to be ready to skate himself.

A New Friend

I think this post is pretty self explanatory.

 

The only thing I need explained is how a 5 year old has already lost 3 teeth!

 

And the explaining might need to be done slowly since that same 5 year old woke me up at 1:00 AM crying that his tooth pillow was missing. 

Thankfully Sam has been super consistent with his blackboard messages so I knew where to look in my awoken from a dead-sleep haze.

Party.

Our annual neighborhood Christmas party was a rousing success.

26 guests, and I do believe a good time was had by all.

 

I always know when we have lots of fun since there are never any pictures, which is the case this time.

 

 

Randi snapped this one so at least I know what the two of us looked liked.

And then I took this one after the party.

I had up the Nice and Naughty List (I was nice and Jason was naughty, of course).

 

Here's what it ended up looking like at the end of the night.

I somehow got moved to the naughty list, and I'm still trying to figure out who "Chilli" is.

And since I seem to be posting pictures of this chalkboard everyday, I think I'll see just how many times I can work it in between now and Christmas.

Fashion Fabulous Friday

It seems like the kids' school is having pajama day every other day.

But nonetheless, they get so crazy excited for it.

 

 

Kyle and Reed have been counting down since Monday.

 

 

Guess who else likes pajama day? Our elf.

Check out those fancy pajamas I made him.

And by 'made' I mean, wrapped scrap pieces of fabric around him and pinned it on.

 

 

 I thought they turned out pretty good, until Reed came in my room this morning announcing, "Sam's wearing a dress!"

The Elf (and Real) Geography Bee

Last week was the school geography bee.  All the kids (4th-8th grade) took a test and the top 6 in each grade got to be in the bee.  JR and another boy got the highest score in the grade, which sounds really impressive until you find out that they got a 40. 

 

 

With a 40 on the pretest (and not studying) our hopes of geography bee glory were zero.

 

 

I never thought he'd make it through the first round.

But he kept going.

 

 

He missed his question right before the finals, but then so did 6 other kids, so they had a tie-breaker to see which kids would go to the finals. 

 

 

And wouldn't you know it, the answer to the question just happened to be: China

 

 

He made it through the first round of finals, but got out the next round on the question:

What river is the Hoover Dam on?  JR's answer: The Hoover River

 

 

I didn't even take any pictures until the finals because I kept thinking he was going to get out every round!

 

 

Excited face during the break before finals (he was the only 4th grader to make it that far).

The final 10.  Those middle school kids make him look so small.

JR made it to the top 8, and was awarded a participation ribbon and, as a top 10-er, a box of Starbursts.

 

Which our elf was happy to claim as his own.

 

 



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.