My dad & step-mom sent the girls a little book called The Elf On The Shelf a few weeks ago. I'd been waiting for December 1st to roll around so we could start some new traditions in our house for the holidays.
The book explains that you have to name the Elf right away and then put him on the shelf. He watches over you all day and each night he flies to Santa to report if you've been naughty or nice. Every morning she has to search the house to find where the elf has posted for the day. The Elf (whom Izzy named Coca - don't judge - she's 3) cannot be touched or he loses his magical powers. It's basically the BEST bribery for a little girl to share, behave, not scream, not push her sister, etc around the holidays.
Coca is working most of the time. Not sure Izzy cared about what Santa thought of her behavior yesterday morning when she pushed her sister down two stairs in her wagon. So yeah, that was fun. Delaney was a screaming mess (and now has a black eye), I was a crying fool, yet Izzy didn't cry until I told her Coca saw the entire thing. She broke down and started apologizing to Coca. Then she apologized to her sister. It's a work in progress.
As a child we always had a chocolate candy advent calendar to open each night. I didn't want to do an advent calendar for a few reasons. So in lieu of that, another tradition I started this year was to wrap up all of our Christmas books (I only had 15 that I've accumulated throughout the years, so my mom and dad both have sent packages with more books to sum up to 25) and each night Izzy gets to open one and that is her nighttime book we read. Gives her something to look forward to each evening. I put all of these books in our holiday storage last year so we wouldn't be reading them throughout the year....to keep an element of surprise when she opens them.
The girls got new winter coats a few weeks ago and this was the first week they donned them to school, as the weather hadn't been cold enough to warrant the thicker jackets until now. It's not all that fun to bundle the girls up and then squeeze them into a car seat; but they are just so stinkin' cute all wrapped up!
We woke up Saturday morning to several inches of snow and Izzy was chomping at the bit to get outside. Mike and Laney stayed inside while Iz and I played.
Getting her feel for walking in all those layers...
Snow angels
Her first taste of snow..."That tastes really yummy in my belly!"
Snow falling on Hawthorne
Izzy wanted to slide
And she loved it!
Laney watching us play
Pajama day!
Saturday evening I headed out to celebrate Molly's birthday and this was the scene as I left: Mike and the girls were watching movies and all snuggled up.
Me, Mols & Jaim at Mesh
Jaim, Molly, Molly, Susan & I
And finally, I decided to bundle up both girls and take them out in the snow today. Laney was NOT a fan of being so layered up...she even fell flat on her face (she has scratches on her nose to prove it) because she couldn't walk in the boots I had on her. Whoops. I bought the very last sled at Target yesterday and we used it all of 5 minutes. Guess we'll have to hit up the hills next weekend.
0 comments :
Post a Comment