Christmas season in a nutshell

Elf

The latest and greatest these days for those parenting preschoolers is to have an "elf on the shelf." The girls named our elf Skittles. Skittles came with a book that explained how he flies to the north pole each night to tell Santa if you've been good each day. Each morning he returns and "lands" in a different spot in the house. If you touch him though, he will lose his magic and can't fly back to see Santa.

Each morning we hear the girls tiptoe out of bed and look all around the house to find him. Usually when they find him they start squealing and giggling. One day the elf was on Willa's nightstand and after we had tucked her in bed that night, we heard hysterical crying. Joel and I ran out and saw Willa hyperventilating. She cried, "I accidentally touched the elf!! Now he's lost his magic and can't see Santa anymore!!"

On this morning the elf got into some chocolate chips! Larkin said, "It's ok mom-he's still a good elf. I bet he was going to take some chocolate chips to Santa!"

Singing

Here's a picture of the girls (front row, on the right) singing Christmas carols at a nursing home with some friends from our neighborhood. They have a lot of songs memorized now and get so excited when we're out somewhere and they hear a song that they know. They love to change up the songs too. Their latest favorite is to sing, "Sadie the red-nosed baby." They change all the words to make sense with Sadie--"they never let poor Sadie join in any baby games."

I love that Willa changes the last line from "you'll go down in history" to "you'll go down in herstory!"

Shopping

Did you know that when you have a baby car seat hooked up to the shopping cart at Target it's almost impossible to see your other children walking in front of you? Just ask Larkin and Willa's ankles!

Here's a picture of Willa at a bookstore when we were out shopping together. I like to let my kids dress themselves (hence the bopper headband).

Night Tree

There's a book called Night Tree by Eve Bunting that I really like--it's about this family that goes and decorates a tree on Christmas Eve for all the animals in the forest. They fill the tree with all kinds of treats for the animals. We did the same thing, and the girls were so excited to get all the treats ready. They cut apples and threaded them onto raffia, made cranberry chains, and a ton of other tasty treats!  We went out one night in the dark to hang it all up and in the daytime we go look and see what got nibbled. Definitely a fun tradition that I hope we'll keep up from year to year!