Things I've learned today and an Elf party

You never save money on the cheap wrapping paper.

If you are going to buy rain boots from one of the bargain shopping sites, make sure you actually know your child's foot size.

Your child with impulse control problems will open all the windows on the Lego advent calendar if you are stupid enough to leave it where they can reach it.

Cats are better at unwrapping than wrapping.

No matter how well you keep track, you will buy two of the same toy at least once every year.

When the Elf decides to have a party in the middle of your family room, he should make sure it isn't on the day you are planning to do your wrapping, if that is where you wrap your presents.*

*Every time Noah left the room this afternoon I moved a piece on the board and changed the die. He couldn't believe more if Nelson stood up and started talking to him.

I LOVE this part of Christmas!

Messing with your kids minds for the win!

Christmas Eve Recap

Noah started the day out in high style in his new car/bed/lounge chair. Who needs real furniture toys when you have a big box!

We kept an exciting day of anticipation moving along by decorating our gingerbread house.

I think it turned out quite festive!

And just in case any evil elves sneak in with Santa it is well protected by some heavily armed Lego men.

After the gingerbread house we decorated gingerbread men.

And women, obviously. Well, I thought it was obvious, but Noah said those are lungs.

 On his last night with us Nelson our elf left us magic candy cane seeds.

So after decorating cookies we planted our magic candy cane seeds.

Thank goodness it wasn't as cold as last year.

One of the awesome things about magic seeds is you really don't need to dig a hole, you can just place them on top of the ground.

Just in case you are curious, you "plant" the seeds with the wrapper off, but the candy canes grow wrapped.

Later, cookies and cocoa were left for Santa.

And apple slices for the reindeer.

Then it was time for the annual reading of "Twas the Night Before Christmas" followed by the annual reciting of the Christmas Morning Rules.

1. No screaming, yelling, or hollering to get out of their room until 8am (Yes, we are cruel. Yes, Noah wrote himself a note to remind himself not to wake up until 8am or later. Wish I had taken a picture, because it was cute.)
2. No one goes downstairs until everyone is ready and Mommy has the camera. 
3. Read the tag on the gifts before you rip it open.
4. If anyone ends up in the ER, the person responsible will be giving all of their gifts to the brother that is broken. 
5. And a special rule for Noah - only one Lego box is allowed to be opened and built at a time. Once it is complete and Mommy gets to see it he can do whatever the heck he wants with it. We will not be repeating the 12 hour Lego sorting marathon of last Christmas vacation.

After saying final farewells to Nelson, off to bed they went, and in a true Christmas miracle they both fell asleep almost immediately!

Rich and I did the rest of our work, and then we hunkered down with a glass of wine and a snack (see above). It was a wonderful evening as we fantasized about the morning to come.

This was my Facebook post at 10:45 pm:

For me this is the best part of Christmas. The kids are asleep, Santa has come and gone, the presents are out, breakfast is ready to pop in the oven in the morning.

Now I can set back with a drink and fantasize about tomorrow. Then I will pinch myself and remember that it will be nothing like my fantasy, but it will still be Christmas and I will still be with the three men I love most in the world.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

Nelson and his antics

I've seen a few blog posts about the Elf on the Shelf and the over achieving Mom's that are pissing off the rest of the Internets.  It just makes me laugh. I took a few of the ideas I saw on Pinterest, but the rest of the time Nelson was pretty tame.

Except for the morning we woke up to this!

The boys were practically beside themselves over this one.

They were slightly less amused when a couple days later they found that Nelson had eaten the last bit of the Halloween candy.

Oh well...

Our elf Nelson

I'm sure most of you know about "Elf on the Shelf." We have had our elf Nelson for a couple years. Definitely before they hit Target. (I like to think we were ahead of the trend.) So Nelson, our elf, is really a lazy ass elf. He doesn't like to move every night much like me when I get my ass comfy on the couch the way he is supposed to.

And forget those fancy antics his brother and sister elves are up to.

At least until this year.

Nelson and I had a little chat the other night. I called him on his laziness. And boring habits. I mean really, just how many time can he sit on the book case?

Well, I guess Nelson took me seriously, because yesterday morning we found him sliding down the pole in Kiel's fire station.

The boys thought that was awesome!

Then this morning we woke up to this!

and this

I think Nelson has been sneaking onto my laptop and checking out Pinterest!