Fred Charles and St. Nicholas

Last year I heard about 'The Elf on the Shelf', but didn't buy the book set because 1) I thought the girls might be a little too young, and 2) I didn't want to spend an extra $30. But this year I thought the girls were hopefully at the right age and went ahead with the splurge : )

The first night we read the book and introduced the elf, Ella and Zoe were pretty wide-eyed and interested. They listened very carefully to the story, had quite a few good questions and decided to name their elf 'Fred Charles'. Then they got silly and kept saying 'poop on the shelf Fred Charles', but sobered up a bit when Tom and I reminded them that Fred Charles would be reporting to Santa each night and we were wondering what Santa would think about those comments : )

It has become such a fun part of our daily routine and I can see this elf business being a family tradition for as long as we can pull it off. Fred Charles has helped calm things down at our house -- when the girls are getting a little extra rambunctious, a reminder of Fred Charles and/or Santa usually takes care of any unpleasantries. The girls also really get a kick out of seeing where Fred Charles is hiding each morning, and his hiding spots have gotten even more clever and silly since Tom started taking over the hiding part.

I was more reserved in my hiding spot choices.

But Tom has found quite a few spots

that make all of us laugh and giggle . . .

We also celebrated St. Nicholas' Day

(a day late, but the girls had no idea).

We wrote St. Nick a letter and left carrots out for his white horse.

Neither Ella or Zoe are real 'easy to wake up type of kids' but they both flew out of bed (still half-asleep) to see if St. Nick indeed did make a stop at our house the night before.

He did, to their delight.

Princess stickers, candy canes and mini-butterfinger candy bars were among the treasures found in their shoes. I had to laugh -- Ella quite dramatically said 'This is peeeeeerfect!! It's just what I always wanted!', while Zoe went straight to work putting her new stickers on a piece of white paper with glitters.

Fun times!!