Our Elves

Oh, our elves are BACK! Ella and Elf. And now they have reindeer pets! Both of them! Yes, both of them! :) Blitz and Witz. (Lainey's is Blitz, Walker's is Witz.)

The kids took turns reading the pages of our Elf on the Shelf book on Thanksgiving night.

Lainey is beyond excited about our elves this year. She writes them notes every single day. And Walker is pretty excited about them, too. Thank goodness her positive energy and enthusiasm wears off on him sometimes!

Lainey...in the middle there...at Liberty High School's Theater Camp. She had so much fun! They did a very short adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Lainey was a Cheshire Cat and something else...I can't remember! It was very brief but very cute. 

Reagan. So needy. She was trying to play Jenga with us. 

Over the break I pulled out my old file folder games from when I taught school. Good thing since Lainey's now in second grade...this idea should have occurred to me sooner! :) Anyway, they're fun and easy and the kids can do them together whenever they want. 

And here is the giant box that held our new Christmas tree! The kids worked to turn the box into a Disney cruise ship. They worked on it for an entire morning but then lost interest...so now it's in the garage until we figure out what to do with it!

Both kids drew televisions. Walker told me he drew the "news" and "people are gettin' dead." (Recently, he read the closed captioning of a news report on the Paris attacks...the sound was off, but he read the words at the bottom. The news was being shown at a restaurant -- we don't have the news on at our house very often!)

And Lainey drew a news report about the weather. 

We have two very different children. They both see that glass of water differently...half-full vs. half-empty!