A New Friend

This year a new friend showed up on December 1st.  A little elf appeared on our shelf with a book explaining a little about himself.

A lot of the kids' friends have elves.  My kids have felt a little left out over the years, but this year we finally got an elf of our own.  Our elf was a little different that our friends' elves.  Our elf isn't naughty at all.  He's a quiet little thing that watches us during the day & reports to santa at night.  Then he reappears in a different spot each morning.  The kids thought it was cool how he would watch & then disappear. . . but they also knew that it didn't take an elf to remind them to be good.  They know that if they're not good. . . mom & dad cancels presents period.  Mom & Dad informs Santa on how things are doing & in the end Mom & Dad are the ones in control of the kids' gifts.  But the elf was definitely a fun addition to the season.

We named our elf Jingle & he was always sure to remind us the true meaning of Christmas.  We'd find him cradling Baby Jesus or admiring Baby Jesus in our many nativity sets.  He would sit on my village church on Sundays to remind us where we needed to be on Sunday.

And occasionally he'd remind us to listen to our mom & dad.  One night Mom told Cadence to put away her smores supplies & she left them out only to find that Jingle ate them ALL.  She never left any of her stuff out again the entire month of December.

Jingle loved to read Christmas books with the family at night too.  We'd occasionally find him reading books on his own.

And there was ONE NIGHT where he did set up a snow fort (out of marshmallows) & had a snowball fight with Canyon's rhino.  But that was the naughtiest he got.  He cleaned the entire mess up the following night to make mommy happy too.

On Christmas Eve Jingle went home with Santa after Santa delivered his gifts.  We had a blast with him & hope he wants to return to our family next year.