December Traditions

December at our house is filled with lots of Christmas traditions. We started a new one though this year with the arrival of Buddy, our Elf on a Shelf. An Elf on a Shelf is an Elf that comes to stay with families during December. Each night he returns to the North Pole to report to Santa how the children are behaving. We seemed to have gotten one that is a little mischievous. The first morning we had Buddy we woke up to this in our den.

Each morning the boys couldn't wait to get up to find Buddy. Some of the things he did while visiting our house were: hung snowflakes all over Tanner & Kannon's room, ate some of Corey's cookies, opened up a couple of our Christmas books, rearranged the manager scene, hid in the Christmas tree, and we even found him in the refrigerator with a glass of milk. On Christmas Eve, he went back to the North Pole with Santa. Next year, I am hoping for an Elf that will clean my house and do a little laundry now and then.

Here is Corey having some hot chocolate at the Christmas Tree farm.
We found out that this was the last year for the tree farm. We were very sad. I am not sure what we will do next year.

Gingerbread Houses

Class Parties


Tanner decorated boxes to put their cookie exchange cookies in. Each student brought a cookie or treat to hand out. Tanner came home with a whole box of goodies.

Handing out his Homemade Oreos

Kannon's class did a Readers Theater of "The Elves and the Shoemaker". Kannon was Mr. Shoemaker.

They also decorated sugar cookies - his turned out to be a little bit of cookie and a whole lot of icing and sprinkles.

The Christmas card shoot

We went to our "once a year" movie on the 22nd along with dinner at Coltons. We saw "Tangled" which everyone liked. There really weren't many options for a family movie. Corey bought a huge soda and he would have been happy watching just about anything.

On the 23rd, we always go bowling. None of us are any good but we sure have a fun time. Thank goodness for bumpers.

I think my favorite part of Christmas is all of the fun activities leading up to it.