Our Elf on the Shelf has a Sense of Humor

We have a lot of fun holiday traditions at our house. Here are just a few:

• Every Thanksgiving Day, we put up our Christmas tree (or at least we start talking about it). 
• Once the tree goes up, the kids put on three ornaments a day so we get to decorate all month long.
• The kids cut out snow flakes and tape them to the walls throughout the month of December.
• We spend at least one Saturday (usually two) listening to Christmas music while doing Christmas crafts.
• We set up a ceramic Christmas town on the coffee table and take turns rearranging it.
• We invent new lyrics to Christmas carols and have a sing off.

We have a two new traditions this year that have really added a lot of fun to the season.  The first is the 12 days of Christmas wall I created for the kids.

The upper row has gifts for Eva and the bottom has treats for Aidan.  Each stocking, bag and pouch has an initial and a number. Some of the stockings and bags are store bought from past Christmases and some are hand sewn and hand made from Cricut cuts. I filled them with little goodies from the Dollar Tree and hand made ornaments I make while they are at school.

The second new tradition is the Elf on the Shelf.  We have had the set for several years but we never got around to playing with it. Eva used the Elf as one of her dolls for a whole year but otherwise the box never made it out of the garage.

This year we decided to see if the Elf on the Shelf thing was real.  I told the kids I was really skeptical and suspected that their friend's parents might be moving the elf each night, but they convinced me to give it a try.

You can imagine my amazement when the elf moved after that first night.  I thoroughly interrogated the children to make sure they did not get up in the middle of the night to move the Elf and they denied it 100%.  I have to say, I believe them. The elf has moved every night since we first put him out and boy does he have a sense of humor.  Check out our Elf and his daily rest stops:

I cannot wait to see where he ends up next!