Dennis

I am very, very behind on blogging, but I'd like to document all this for our memory. This year was the first year that we did Elf on the Shelf. I've been looking forward to it since last Christmas. We had our Elf come on December 1st. So, on  November 30th, I mentioned the boys that Santa was sending an Elf to stay with us for the month of December and that we'd have to name him. I did not think the boys would "get" naming him, so I was excited to get to name the Elf. But, Carter didn't miss a beat and said "his name will be Dennis" and Evan said "Yep, his name is Dennis" I'm very impressed with their naming skills, I expected any suggestions from them to be something like "elfie" (not that there's anything wrong with that name) That night for bedtime, we read the book that came with the Elf on the Shelf and it explained that they are not allowed to touch him or he'll lose is magical powers, and that he goes back every night while they're sleeping to report to Santa about their day. They were really excited when they went to bed.

We decided to welcome Dennis with a Northpole Breakfast. We also had a book advent for the boys for the month of December, so we had Dennis bring that. He also brought each boy a fun present to open. This is 24 Christmas books that I've been collecting over the past year or two and I put them under the tree on the 1st and the boys get to open a new one each night before bedtime for us to read. They loved this tradition and it worked out great--no fighting over books and they opened them together. I hope to do this next year, too.

We had Dennis on the table so they'd see him when they came down. I saw some pretty elaborate North Pole breakfast set ups on Facebook and Instagram. Maybe next year. This year was simple and easy.

All the wrapped books under the boys special tree.

Some of the goodies that Dennis gave them at breakfast. A Grinch shirt (their favorite character ever) a cotton ball advent, Christmas coloring book, Christmas socks,

And a kids Christmas cd that they LOVED.

The boys gifts were waiting for them on their chairs for when they woke up.

The boys got to enjoy hot cocoa with breakfast.

I tried to make the reindeer pancakes that I saw on Instagram. Thankfully, I was making these for 3 year old kids who could care less that they don't look anything like reindeer. Evan was just happy there was bacon.

Then the boys opened their goodies from Dennis.

This was them opening their book on the first night.

I loved doing Elf on the Shelf and will definitely be doing it again next year. The boys got such a kick out of finding him in the mornings when they woke up. He didn't really do much, he mostly just changed hiding spots and they had to find him. They would love to tell Dennis when they were being good or the other one was being bad. But, they also like to tell Dennis when the other one did something really nice for them, they'd do tell Dennis nice things about their brother, too. It was very sweet. I wish I would have taken more pictures of where I hid him, but it wasn't anything too exciting,