Festive Fun

We had our neighborhood (sort of) family Christmas party a couple of weekends ago at some friends' house. The kids and adults both have so much fun.

Here are (most of) the kiddos.

 At one point it seemed like the boys were being awfully quiet. I went to the play room to check on them and I found them playing the game "Headbandz". I thought this was a cute scene. Evidently they ran out of "headbandz" so Thad was resourceful and used this Batman mask instead. Ha!

 Like last year, Santa made an appearance and brought one gift for each of the kids. The older kids are sure this is definitely not the "real" Santa, but it's fun anyway.

" Who's been good this year????"

 Each child had to go sit on Santa's lap to get their present. Thad complied, but he could not get off his lap fasts enough once he had the gift in his hands.

 We did take a picture of all the adults together, but I didn't get one with my camera. Here's Brent and I.

Here are some other random Christmas-y things

These are the teachers gifts I made this year. 

It's can hold photos, notes, etc. I didn't include this picture of Brent and I- just trying it out. We clipped a gift card on it.

This past Thursday night we went to "A Real Bookstore" to see Santa. This is where we went last year too.  They don't let you take your own pictures. We did buy one print, but I haven't scanned it in yet.

Here they are outside the bookstore.

 This is a cute mailbox where you can mail your letters to Santa. The kids didn't have letters, but thought it was fun to see how far down Santa's throat they could reach their hands. 

I wanted a picture with my girl, but we were photo-bombed by Thad.

One more try.

I've mentioned our Elf before. Well this year the kids decided his name is probably Rodey rather than Elfie. We went with it. Rodey has sill not given into the "Elf on the Shelf" peer pressure of trying to come up with some creative prank to pull on the kids each night. He just feels his job is to keep an eye on the kids for Santa rather than to stay up all hours of the night creating messes for me to clean up in the morning and trying to think of yet ANOTHER silly elf-antic to entertain the kids. Rodey and I are on the same wave-lenght:)

He does move (almost) every night and has one or two surprises for the kids each year.

The other night he left "Magic Christmas Sprinkles" for them with instructions on how to "plant" them in flour and sugar to see what "grew".

They were excited to see what the seeds had produced the next morning.

They kept calling the seeds, magic "potion". Hollace wrote this thank-you note to Rodey the next night. So funny.

I do have some more Christmas fun to post, but I guess it will end up being in a Christmas memories post. I can't believe it's already here again!