Old and New traditions

Every family has holiday traditions! One of ours is opening a present on Christmas Eve (which is always jammie related and Jessica's side has done it since she can remember) another is taking a meal to a family on Christmas Eve (we put a basket together of everything they need for a meal, drive to a lower income area and knock and run, makes us feel grateful for all we have, thankful to have enough to share with others, and hopefully will teach our children that giving is more important than receiving), we donate clothes, canned goods, and now old toys to anywhere we can and we have others... but we adopted a new tradition this year... starting after Thanksgiving...

First we wrote letters to Santa, for the kids this is their first year where they could write their letters on their own, mommy helped by spelling everything out and teaching them spacing, but they did it on their own and we are so proud of them!

Close up of their letters

The next morning they had a present from SANTA! With a letter stating he received their letters and was sending them a special gift to remind them to be good and that he was watching them even more closely until Christmas. They were so excited and immediately opened Elf on the Shelf, we read the story and had to name their elf, Randi wanted "Chris" and Ryan wanted "the elf" so there we had it "Chris the Elf" :) 

Aren't they cute? Not that I'm bias... so far Chris has been found drinking some water out of a festive straw, snuggling by the TV in Randi's baby doll sleeping bag, and using the fire truck arm to putting up decorations (seen below)

I'm excited to see them continually find their elf, a few other places we have conjured up are coloring, brushing his teeth, reading a book, baking, taking a bath, playing xbox, climbing the Christmas tree, making snow angels (in flour), playing UNO, driving the dump truck... etc... and many more since I still have 27 days to do it! Wish me luck!

Finishing off with adorable photos of the twinkies new hats... enjoy!