Smurf Elf 2018!

Need to document what happened with our Elf over the Holidays 2018!!

He arrived on December 1st with a new Lego Advent Calendar for Ms. Ella!

Ella wanted to check-in with Smurf Elf and decided to leave a note!

December 2 - He's back with answers for Ella!

December 3 - working on a Word Find!

December 4 - Peeking under the tree - uh oh!

December 5 - Ella got a new Ornament with Smurf Elf on it!

December 6 - Just hanging around with a pair of Tiger Basketball Pants!

December 7 - Crafting to add more Holiday Cheer!

December 8 - Checking out the Christmas Cards we have received! 

(And Smurf Elf shared with Ella that he is 210 years old!)

December 9 - Checking out the Christmas Lights with a friend!

December 10 - Hiding in plain sight on the fridge!

December 11 - Taco Tuesday!

December 12 - Reading a Christmas book by Lego candlelight

December 13 - Tower of Toilet Paper!!

December 14 - Knock Knock…

December 15 - Getting close to the big day and loading up on some treats!

December 16 - Let's go Vikings!

December 17 - Found some yummy Oreo cookies!

December 18 - Sledding!

December 19 - Smurf Elf loves getting into mischief and loves Christmas bows!

December 20 - Pop Quiz to remember why we celebrate Christmas

December 21 - Smurf Elf brought Ella a fun needlepoint craft to make of Santa!

December 22 - We made it to Grandma Deb's and Smurf Elf found us there too!

Also, Ella left a little note for Smurf Elf about stealing donut holes and hoping to confirm that she is on the NICE LIST! We left donut holes and milk early for Santa because we were celebrating with Grandma Deb and of course Santa was making a special trip for this celebration!!

December 23 - Smurf Elf sat by Santa to watch over our early Christmas party!

December 24 - Smurf Elf decided to hang out in Ella's stocking to await his ride back to the North Pole with Santa!

Whew! Another fun December with Smurf Elf! 

(better late than never posting!!) 

HA!

December weekending....

Hello!  We have been busy enjoying the month of December around here!  

Let's see....

Our Elf on the Shelf, Smurf Elf, arrived on December 1st!  

Ella was pumped to get a new Advent calendar (Lego Friends)!

What else...we were Target shopping and Jay was so pumped because he found the game Crossfire which as you will see in a minute he received back in the '80s and it was so awesome (he says).  LOL!

Amazing...he spent some time digging in old photos and found the '80s Christmas picture 

when he received Crossfire for the first time.  :) 

Last weekend was a busy one! Ella started rec league basketball!
This is her first time playing basketball, but she is looking forward to it!
Her first game is this Saturday!

Also last weekend was our new annual tradition - Cozy Cocoa Christmas Cruise!! We headed out in our Christmas PJs for dinner (Panera), hot chocolate (Caribou) and then took a cruise around to check out Christmas lights!  It's so fun!  Next year though, Ella doesn't want to have hot cocoa so we'll just do cookies instead!

(Caribou selfie)

(Car selfie - off we go!)

 All the light displays we saw were awesome and choreographed to music...

 (Home selfie attempting to get a better PJ picture)

And because it's part of who we are...a few of the not great selfies...

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!

Ella also had the church Christmas program last Sunday. She didn't have a speaking part (whew!) but she was in the choir. It was so fun to sing all the great songs we have at this time of year!!

 She was the first in line this year and she thought that was so cool!

 Jay's parents were able to join us!

So they snapped a picture of us too!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

November Happenings....

The month of November has flown by!  I can't believe tomorrow is December 1 already!  I thought I better get this blog back on track!  Here we go with some November reminiscing....

 Ella had a check-up for her braces and they added a chain along the front four teeth, which apparently means that they are happy with their location, so the chain helps to keep them in place while the rest of the teeth are still moving. We have another check-up soon with an x-ray to see if all the teeth are in the right place!

 I brought out the Christmas PJs a bit early because it has been so cold!  

I love the Old Navy waffle PJs and last year's printed legging is still my favorite!  

Speaking of favorites, we did something new this year with some friends and went to Turkey Bingo at the Farmington Fire Station!  It was madness!!  A lot of people there to support the cause, play bingo and win some prizes!  I have never played Turkey Bingo before, so I was a rookie.

  But I won a turkey!!  BINGO!!!  The winning call was B-4.  It was amazing! :)

Turkey Bingo was also a pre-birthday bash hanging out with friends, which leads to the big birthday. To be honest, I didn't really celebrate too much.  I wasn't feeling well and my aunt passed away early in the morning, so I wasn't in a very celebratory mood.  But, because it was a big event, I did have the day off (duh!) and I got the largest most delicious peppermint mocha frappuccino from Starbucks (below). I took a picture because it was made so cute and the barista wrote Happy Birthday on my cup!

 And this is 40.

I will say that my selfie game has come along way, am I right?!  :)

I also baked myself a birthday cake.  A mint chocolate birthday cake.  It turned out great and tasted amazing, but because I wasn't feeling well, I had a slice on my birthday and that was it.  

Boo!  But isn't it cute!

Just before Thanksgiving, Ella had a PJ day along with crazy hair day at school! 

Here's what she wanted to do this year...

 

And then it was Thanksgiving!  It came so fast!  We spent it in Worthington this year.  But, it was a late start. Have I mentioned I wasn't feeling well?  Yep, still wasn't feeling great and I wasn't sure I was up for the trip, but as the day progressed, I felt a little more energetic, so we loaded up the truck and headed out. I felt better the next day, so thank goodness we didn't stay home!  We would have missed out on all the yummy food, like Grandma's potatoes and Kaila's salad!  :)

 Sitting in "chairs" with Grey Spots to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade!

 Showing off our Thanksgiving Day hats we colored!

I got this cute Turkey before Thanksgiving.  We each wrote something we are thankful for on a feather along with the date.  It was fun to read each other's messages and I think it will be neat to pull out every year and add another layer of thankful feathers!  

Gobble Gobble!

The weekend of Thanksgiving we decorated the house for Christmas! 

I love this time of year, but it is a LOT of work to get the house decorated! It took me the entire Saturday and I didn't even finish. Ugh. But, I had the Christmas music playing and just tried not to stress out about it and enjoy hanging out with Ella (the best helper!) to make the house cute!

 This year's Grandma Alice tree in the front window 

with family ornaments that used to be my Grandma's.

And this is our big tree in the family room this year! 

Isn't sitting in the dark with only the tree lights on the best?!  

I love it!

And that about sums up the major happenings of our November 2018. 

We are looking forward to lots of fun things in the upcoming weeks!

Ella will be starting musical practice, basketball practice, she will have a dance winter show and church Christmas program too! Whew!  On top of those, we need to sneak in Christmas movie nights, our Cozy Cocoa Christmas Cruise to check out the lights and visit SANTA!

Family Pics and Halloween!

A few things to document from the past week or so!  Last weekend we got together with Jay's side of the family for some family pictures.  Luckily, the weather wasn't too bad!  I snapped a few cell phone pictures since I'm not sure if we get to see the proofs or not! 

 All the cousins! 

 Grandparents with the grandkids!

 Another grandparents with the grandkids!

How does Ella look like she's 16?!  What in the world these kids grow up so fast!  

I think she looks so adorable in her little top, scarf and tall boots!  Love it!!

 I snapped a married selfie while we were waiting!! HA!

 This photo is maybe a favorite of all time!  

Ella is totally ready and all of the boys are just a disaster!  LOL! 

Mom/daughter selfie...we coordinated ourselves.  :)

We had some great MN weather last night for Halloween 2018!  This year, Ms. Ella chose to be an ice cream cone.  Originally, her and friends were all going to be farm animals (which apparently inspired Jay as you will see below), but then the girls changed their minds.  So, in the interest of time, we bought Ella's costume instead of making it.  The kids were able to wear their costumes to school for the entire day (lots of fun activities at school!) and that made it nice because she was all ready to go trick-or-treating!

 My little ice cream cone and dairy cow! (Get it?!)

 Always posing...

 I did not dress up.  Maybe next year!

 I thought it was hilarious walking around with this guy dressed as a cow and he was carrying Ella's glow stick wand which I thought looked like a light saber.  Dork!

 Like I said...always posing!!

 We were snapping weird selfie pics while Ella was getting candy!

And of course she got home and had to sort that bucket of loot!  LOL!  I always did that too.  And then she had to count to see which type of candy she got the most of!  This year she also sorted into piles that she can and cannot eat (because of her braces).  :)  Love it!  

In case you wanted to know, she got the most Reeses Peanut Butter cups this year!