Saturday, December 10, 2011

'Tis the Season

Christmas preparations are well underway.   A few holiday highlights:

We greeted Santa who arrived by boat in Occoquan.  Tess painted a Christmas tree picture to welcome Santa, but made it clear to us that Santa was only supposed to look at it, not keep it.





Tess was just fine keeping this distance from Santa.


It was not difficult to convince her to skip the LOOOOONG line to sit on Santa's lap and opt for the cupcake shop instead.  After sweets we stopped by the Christmas shop to pick out ornaments for the kids.  Tess picked Hello Kitty and Drew got a basketball.




I took the kids back to Occoquan for Christmas photos (not an easy feat, I tell you!).  A different pic will arrive on your Christmas card.



We welcomed a new tradition this year with an Elf on the Shelf gift from our Morley cousins.  I heard about this tradition and thought it would be fun:  A little elf doll comes to stay at your house before Christmas.  He's one of Santa's helpers and keeps an eye on kids during the day and flies back to the North Pole to report to Santa at night.  When the elf comes back, he hides in a new place in the house and the kids have to find him in the morning.  


So I told Ann about this idea before Tess started obsessing that Santa wasn't going to bring her presents because she'd done crying this year.  Hmmmm.  I decided to try it anyway--just a fun game right?  First thing you're supposed to do is name your elf.  Tess thought long and hard and came up with an appropriate tribute to our gift-givers:  "Morley."  We read the story that comes with the elf and Tess was totally not buying it.  "Mom, he can no fly.  He's a doll and dolls can't fly!"  "Mom, how can he see me?  His eyes don't go like this [shifting her wide eyes back and forth]."  I explained that Morley has a bit of Santa's magic in him that can enable him to do amazing things.  She told me, "Mom, I don't have any magic in me.  I just have bones.  That's how I go."

So the first day of having Morley around, Tess must have told me about 4 times that Santa wasn't going to bring her presents because of something she did wrong.  I finally explained to her that Morley loves her and Santa loves her and they don't expect her to be perfect, but to just try her best.  Morley likes to point out all the good things that Tess does and Tess has grown very fond of him.  She loves finding tricky Morley's new hiding spot every morning.


Here's a LOOOONG conversation I taped of Tess and her elf.  The actual conversation was probably 30 mins.  It's a pretty good window to her little mind at this age.


Drewie's first encounter with the Christmas tree.  He has a funny way of saying "O-o-o-o, W-o-w!" when he's impressed by something.  I love his little circle lips in these photos.  He likes to point to the tree if you ask him to show you the Christmas tree.






We stopped by this neat live nativity put on by a local church.  It's just off the road so those who drive by can see it, but we found a spot across the street to get out and watch for a while.  The had live animals:  donkeys, sheep, camels, goats and even a chicken.  Tess was scared the camels were going to come across the street and get her.  She spotted the chicken and after being afraid the chicken was going to fly across the street and get her, she lamented all the way home that our nativity set is lacking a Christmas chicken.


They even had a strong spot light that shot up into the sky for the star of Bethlehem.  We spotted it in the sky on the way there and it was fun to "follow the star" to the manger scene.  We could still see it sweeping the sky when we got home.



Other than her fear of the live animals, Tess really did like it.  She really wanted to go see baby Jesus' "cute little face."

2 comments:

Dipsy said...

The elf video is priceless. She certainly has a very busy mind! Look how much Drew has grown and learned in one short year! Miss you guys!

Ann said...

LOVE MORLEY!!!!