Elf on the Shelf 2012

We had a ton of fun this year with our elf Bernard! 

 One morning he got himself a bowl of Cheerios.

One morning he toilet papered Cade's bedroom tree.

One morning he left us some ingredients and a note....

 The kids did exactly what the note said.  They planted the Kisses in the sugar and sprinkled the magic sprinkles over the top.

And the next morning they had grown candy canes!!!

We went to the cabin for 4 days and when we came home we found Bernard playing a game of cards with the Barbies.  Apparently he got bored while we were away.

One morning he got into our chocolates.

He sat by our nativity set.

He didn't move from our nativity set for two days.  Molly admitted that she had touched him.  I sent an email to Santa and asked him what to do.  The next day in the mail, a letter arrived for Molly.  It told her that elf magic was very special and that she was not to touch him!  He sent us some magic elf dust. (which was some silver glitter in a small baggie - like the ones extra buttons come in when you buy a new shirt.)

She sprinkled it over Bernard and he was good as new!

He cut us out some amazing snowflakes!  Our favorite one was the "ho ho ho" one and the one with the cool stars in it.

 He left us some "elf" kisses.

One morning we found him in Cade's closet on the bookshelf reading.

 And the funniest one of all.....

The cousins were sleeping over and he drew musthaches all over each one of them while they slept.  He drew big eyebrows on Alivia, he drew big eyebrows and a gotee on Averi and a mustache and devil horns on Sidney.  They all looked super funny!

The Pond at Christmas

The pond was so pretty this morning.  It was a whopping 12 degrees outside and the steam coming off the pond looked really pretty.

I don't know how the duck and swans can stand to swim in it.

And at night it's lit up with floating trees and other decorations.

It's so pretty to drive around.

Hey mom! Look what I can do!

Molly is so proud of her donut!

Gingerbread Houses

And the finsished products!  

Jens' house

Sidney's house

Cade's house

Molly's 2 houses

Abbie's house

Family pictures

My neighbor Shasta took our pictures this fall and they turned out so pretty!  

She did an amazing job!  We love them.

Jens is 14

Sidney is 13

Cade is 9

Molly is 5

Molly Cat

I flat ironed Molly's hair this morning and I wanted to take a picture of it 

because it looks so long when it's straight.

So she posed and smiled once for me.

And then she stated to pull faces.

She's such a silly girl!

Christmas Cabin

Every year for Christmas, Jeff's parents rent a cabin for us all to go and stay.  It's our Christmas present.  This cabin was our most favorite by far!  It was up Sundance and it was beautiful!

Stupidly I didn't take pictures of the inside until the next day when we were all unloaded and our stuff was all over.  But you can still see how pretty it was.  The kitchen was big and Sam's eyes lit up when he saw it.  He quickly announced that he would need to be doing some cooking in there, which made us all excited because we all love Sam's cooking.  The fireplace in the living room was huge.  Jeff is    6' 3" and you can see how the mantle is barely shorter than him.  He would tell the kids stories by the fire every night.

There was a movie theatre in there and we watched movies everyday.  

That was my favorite part of the vacation.

The kids put on a talent show in the theatre for all of us.  That was Molly's favorite part.

Jens, Jaxon, Cade, Chase & Gunner all brought air soft guns and had a couple wars out in the trees.  Joel and Scott teamed up and had a couple wars against Jens and Jaxon.  This was Jens' favorite part.

There was a hot tub, steam room and a dry sauna.  The guys and the kids loved it all.  They went from the hot tub to the steam room to a cool shower and then to the dry sauna.  

This was Sidney's favorite part.

There was an outdoor fireplace on the main deck.  We roasted marshmallows out there.

There were 3 stories to this cabin and a 4th story loft that had a pin ball machine, a fooze ball table and a gaming system.  This loft was Cade's favorite place to hang out. 

 Having so many floors and rooms made it so nice.  All the kids could spread out and us adults could actually hear ourselves think!

It was a great weekend!

The only downfall was when we were on our way home, it had snowed a couple inches and it was 23 degrees outside.  There was black ice on the freeway.  Two cars a couple cars in front of us wrecked.  There was an Expedition right directly in front of us and he tried to avoid hitting them and hit the black ice too and rolled his car down off the side of the freeway right in front of us.  All my kids saw.  We pulled over and Jeff ran down to them to help them.  Jeff's brothers were behind us shortly and pulled over to help as well.  In the next couple of minutes that followed, 4 others cars and a truck with a flatbed trailer on the back of it wrecked right there too, in the same spot NARROWLY missing Sam and Whitneys truck, with their 4 kids inside.  A total of 10 vehicles were off the road in some kind of wreck.  It was scary for the moment.  But in the end, everyone was thankfully okay.  Even the family of 5 in the Expedition that had rolled.