Last year, Memaw found this fun little holiday elf doll for the kids. It came out of a catalog and you get to do all of the following: determine hair and eye color, pick his/her name and pick the department where the elf works at the North Pole. The elf is mailed to you with all these "elf note" blank cards, a letter from Santa and a letter from the elf. The gist is that the elf "watches" the kids all day and has to sit still, but when they are sleeping at night, he gets to do all kinds of fun stuff. (Thankfully he comes with a book of ideas!) He is also supposed to return to Santa on Christmas Eve to report back on the naught vs. nice factor of "his kids" (and he comes with a "you're now my best friends, it was fun, gotta run" note to leave for them to find on Christmas morning) Here are the details on our elf: his name is Lodey (LOgan, aiDEn, bradY) and he works in the cars (Logan) and balls (Aiden) department.

Yesterday, I gave the kids the note from Santa that said "very soon I will be sending a special friend to watch over you and keep you company this month". I told them that it arrived a few days ago and I forgot about it until the elf showed up during nap time! Lodey was hanging in his stocking on the cabinets in the dining room. This morning...he had a little project planned for the boys.


Here are strips of red and green paper plus a note from Lodey.
Lodey's note. My plan was to make a chain with 23 links since we have 23 days left until Christmas. Each morning, the boys can tear one link off until there is only one left on Christmas morning (an interactive advent calendar). I accidentally spelled Lodey's name wrong on my note. Good thing the kids can't read :) Here I had the boys pick out 5 green and 5 red strips each (I put three together to show them how it worked). They alternated putting a little glue on the end of a strip and I put the links together. They only had the attention span to make about 10 of them so I quickly did the rest.
Our finished product!

Here are some pictures I took yesterday. The boys REALLY REALLY wanted to play outside since we got a couple inches of snow that finally stuck to the ground. I released them to the backyard during both breakfast and lunch preparation. 10 minute spurts seem to satisfy them...especially after they soaked their gloves the second time scooping all the snow off of the patio table.They came RUNNING and yelling "SHOVELS!!!" when I dug their snow shovels out of the garage. I sort of knew they would be thrilled so I obviously took my camera with me to deliver the "goods".
This is Brady...watching his brothers clear the snow off of the table. He kept crawling over to the window and looking out. I'm sure he wishes he could join in. One more year baby....and you'll be out there too!!