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Monday, December 6, 2010

Christmas Traditions

This holiday season, we have done some very fun things!  As usual, I am always trying to instill some family tradition into our holiday season!


This year, we added a new tradition....The elf on a shelf!  This is a great little package including a book (that explains the tradition of the elf) and an stuffed little elf.  You name the elf (the boys named ours Zap) and the elf's job is to be Santa's eyes.  At night, Zap flies back to the North Pole to let Santa in on the day of Carson and Logan.  When he flies back (in time to be back when the boys wake up), he finds a new spot in the house in which to watch the boys.  We added our own personal dimension to this...we have Santa write notes to the boys ("good job with making good choices yesterday", "work harder or I'm flying right past your house on Christmas eve", etc., ).  It's been fun, but it's been difficult to remember to move Zap every night!  My friend Angela assured me that this would be your key to good behavior during the holidays.  Well...I don't know about that, but it has helped a little, so I'll take it!

We've had a tough time with the boys' behavior lately.  The thing that has helped the most with their behavior is The Portable North Pole!  You enter information specific to your child like their name, hair and eye color, what behavior your child has been working on this year (and how well they have done with it), what they want for Christmas (and can even download a picture of it) and the program even makes a book with downloaded pictures that you add!  It uses this information to customize a video from Santa.  Once the video is made, you receive it via e-mail and the best part, you ask??  It's totally FREE!!

Carson was quite naughty on Saturday, so I made him a video telling Santa that he had been naughty.  Here is the video that was sent to Carson!  After watching the video, Carson looks at me and says "Mom, I'll try harder!" (finally, maybe something has gotten through to him!!)  And here is the video sent to Logan!

After several weeks of bad behavior, the boys FINALLY earned a trip to McDonald's and they were very excited!  After McDonald's, we went to the Morford Family Carousel and the boys had a BLAST!  There was a spinning cup (like the tea cups at Disneyland) and Carson loved that!  The boys rode the carousel 3 times and Carson rode the spinning cup all 3 times!





The boys worked on their letters to Santa this weekend.  Logan dictated his and Carson wrote his letter all by himself (dictated it and then copied what I wrote).
Logan's Letter to Santa

Carson's Letter to Santa
Dear Santa,
Snow is here!  I'm sorry for being mean to my mommy.  I will try harder.
Please bring me Loopz for Christmas.
We will be in Roseburg, OR for Christmas with my cousins.
Carson George
(picture of Santa on sleigh and reindeers flying in the clouds)

After working on the letters, the boys took them to the post office to mail them!  I found this cool website.  If you include a return stamped envelope with Santa's letter inside, they will return the letter to you with the North Pole stamp on it!  We'll see if we receive our return letter!  The boys would get a huge kick out of it!


Tomorrow, we are off to the Garden d'Lights in Bellevue!  I hope the boys enjoy it!  It's FREE!  Check out the website for other free nights!

Well...I think that is about it!  We hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

2 comments:

Dawn said...

Great letters to Santa, and love the pics of them at the post office. SO CUTE! Awesome scrapbook material!!!!! How was the light place you went to? Hugs! Dawn

Kari George said...

Dawn!

I know...I love the scrapbook material as well! This is the first time that we wrote letters to Santa and they seemed to enjoy it.

Garden d'Lights was really pretty. I'm glad that we went on a FREE night and didn't have to pay for it (every little bit helps, right?). The down side was that it took longer to get there than it did to go through the exhibit...and it was pouring down rain! The boys didn't seem to care though. It was probably the perfect length for their attention span, you know??

Take care, Kari