Christmas Randomness and other stuff

This month has been an odd one!  It has flown by and yet seemed to last so long all at the same time. There are so many things left to do for Christmas, yet there are so many other things weighing on my mind. The weather has seemed more like Spring (except for today) than winter.  It feels too soon for Christmas to be here and yet several Christmas activities have passed or will pass soon, like the kids performance at school.

I have work to think about. This is the first Christmas season I have had to work since the year after Elias was born. It has been getting more commonplace, but definitely is different than recent years when my time was all mine to allot.

I have several friends who are really going through some tough times. I have acquaintances who are also struggling with different things. It is hard to think about being merry when I know so many people cannot be this season. 

The kids are growing fast. When I switched the kids clothes from summer to winter, I had to switch out Elias' kids hangers for adult hangers because his clothes were getting too big and falling off.  Both kids were able to wrap their gifts to each other and us this year.  It makes me happy and sad to see them growing so much, especially at Christmas.  In light of this thought, we gave in to the "Elf on the Shelf" craze. We decided they'll only be young enough to enjoy that sort of thing for a little while longer.

The kids have been hearing stories of their classmates' elves and Bella went to 2 friends' houses who had elves.  One elf even made muffins as a special treat since Bella was visiting. Bella was telling Elias all about it and she concluded with, "Elves are good bakers!".  Elias said, "Elves don't bake!" Josh said, "What do you think the Keebler Elves do?" Elias said, "Who are the Keebler Elves?" (We don't eat a lot of cookies here and the kids hardly ever see commercials.)

I had begun wanting to buy them an elf a couple weeks ago, but it seemed crazy since we don't really push Santa with our kids and only one of our kids' presents comes from Santa.  But I realized the kids don't care about him reporting back to Santa and all that, they just like to find out where he will be next. 

Josh and I had talked about getting an elf several times, but he said they were creepy and expensive. The night before last, Josh came home and said we could get one, but only if we named him Chucky. So we went to bed and I thought I would pick one up the next time I got to the mall. I woke up to this.

 I have to admit, it was a little creepy, but it was so sweet for Josh to surprise me with him. I felt like a kid myself!

We hid him away before the kids saw him and that night, we put him by the computer where he had typed out a message to the kids.

The kids were so cute. They were talking to him and talking about him all night. We decided to name him Charlie - with Chuck as a nickname!  After we read the book and talked about him for a while, we did our advent activity, which was to read about the 12 Days of Christmas and sing the song.  Josh and I were being goofy and singing obnoxiously and Elias said, "I'm embarrassed to have Chuck meet our family!"

This morning he rode back in on our reindeer. This picture was taken before I decided to put him by the computer.  The letter that I ended up acting like he had typed is sitting in front of the book.
 

We have to do our advent activity for the evening and it is getting late. Tonight the kids get to eat candy canes, so I think they'll enjoy this one! There have been a couple that the kids haven't enjoyed so much! I will have to revamp some of the activities next year.  I don't mind if they are a little indifferent to some of the activities, because they are still just small kids, but I don't want them to hate doing them either.

After they go to bed, I will have to rack my brain to figure out where Charlie will turn up next, which was my biggest hesitation about getting an elf!