Every December, our town has a parade where all the participants have lights on their floats. Santa also comes to town with this parade. After the parade, we go inside one of the banks downtown and see him. The kids tell him what they want for Christmas.
This year, Finn's Boy Scout Troop had a float in the parade. Jeremy and Finn rode on it. We met them at the bank afterwards. Finn made it there just in time to get his picture taken with his siblings with Santa and Mrs. Claus. When I say, just in time, I mean just in time. Piper, Seven, and Rilian had just sat down to have their picture taken and Finn arrived!
Of the four pictures I took, these two are the best pictures.
With four young children, it's not always possible to have everyone looking at the camera at the same time. So, you get what you can.
With Santa, comes Jingle Bells. He is our Elf on the Shelf. We were lucky and he came back this year. Not every family gets to have an Elf, but we do. He came last year for the first time.
When the kids woke up the next morning, Jingle Bells was on the tv. We let them watch tv while they eat their breakfast. I guess Jingle Bells wanted to make sure they saw him and knew he had come back this year.
The next day, he was up on the lights above our kitchen table.
In the kid's bathroom, up on the cabinets...
Back to the kitchen, hanging upside down, on the light above the island...
In the fish tank...I think he had a hard time staying under the water, so he got a brick to put in the bag he was in to keep from floating up.
When I looked at him later on, there was water in the bag. He was floating on the water inside the bag! I guess he didn't seal the bag very good and it let water in eventually.
Since Jingle Bells got pretty wet in the fish tank, the next place we found him was on the drying rack in the garage.
He hid on top of the blinds in the playroom...
One night, he went in Piper's room and got her Barbie's horse and riding boots...Silly Elf!
He climbed up our movie shelf and sat looking at his movie...
I guess Jingle Bells felt acrobatic one night. He was hanging upside down from our ceiling vent!
However, the kids were throwing balls at him. I'm not sure if they were trying to knock him down, or what. The older three kids denied doing it and blamed it all on Rilian. Jingle Bells wrote them this note...
He taped it below where he was sitting the next night.
He sat on top of our speaker above the doorway...
Apparently, Jingle Bells isn't afraid of snakes. He hid in Cutie's cage! Jingle Bells looked like a giant in there.
He got a little mischievous and wrote on the toilet and hid in the cabinet above the toilet. If you can't read what he wrote, it says, "Ho Ho Ho! Who has to go?"
The next night, he brought the kids his favorite milk...green milk! Seven and Rilian drink pink milk alot. It is strawberry milk. I was afraid Seven and Piper wouldn't want to drink the green milk. But after we reassured them that it didn't taste any different, they reluctantly drank some with their breakfast.
He sat on top of our water cooler...
He hung upside down under our kitchen cabinets...
We always get a real Christmas tree. When we bring it home, we let it sit for a day before decorating it so the branches have time to fall into place. The night we got our tree, Jingle Bells did a little decorating of his own.
Jingle Bells hid behind the snowmen we had on our mantle. Rilian likes to play with these snowmen so he VERY carefully got them down, so as not to touch Jingle Bells. Remember, you can't touch him because he will lose his magical power and won't be able to come back the next day. It was funny/cute to see how careful Rilian was in getting the snowmen down to play with.
Jingle Bells drank syrup one night...
He hid in a stocking...
He played Angry Birds!
He hung on the Texas Star that my step-dad hung upside down on our wall. Either my step-dad didn't realize he had hung it that way, or he was being funny.
Jingle Bells got a pair of Rilian's underwear and hung on the curtain rod. The kids thought this was really funny! They said he had a wedgie and had a good laugh about it.
Jingle Bells got a piece of bread out of the pantry and put it over his head. I guess he ate part of it, because I never found the missing piece.
On Jingle Bell's last night, he had some fun in a winter wonderland. He made a snow angel, built a snowman, and threw snowballs at the snowman from behind a snow wall. The first picture is a panoramic view.
This picture is just a normal view...
Christmas Eve when Santa comes to deliver the presents, Jingle Bells hops in the sleigh with Santa and heads back to the North Pole. He left this note for the kids and a present for each of them from him.
I must not have gotten a picture of the presents he left them. He got each of them a big glow stick with a star on top. Jingle Bells must have known they love glow sticks!
