Continuation of our life. . . : Jackie returns

In our family we started a tradition with the Elf on the Shelf in 2012. Our family elf, Jackie arrives on the Sunday after Thanksgiving and stays with us until Christmas Eve. This year was the same.

Jackie arrived in style, she was sure to set up a North Pole breakfast for our family of four. She brought us santa hats (strawberries set on top of bananas), peppermint elf pillows (peppermint marshmallows), snowy donuts (powdered sugar donuts), and snow man soup (hot cocoa, w/ candy can mixed in and marshmellows). Jackie this year made some fresh banana reindeer cakes (banana bread with chocolat chips sprinkled on top.

The table was decked out and ready for when the girls awoke. I was woken up to "Mommy, Jackie's here. It's real it's real it's real". My 5 1/2 year old was extremely excited about Jackie arriving. My 2 year old didn't really understand what was going on, other than she was going to get to have a donut for breakfast and that was pretty exciting for her as we try hard to not do a lot of sugary items especially not for breakfast!

Both girls devoured their North Pole Breakfasts. Thankfully there is only one rule about Jackie. "Do not touch her, as she may lose her magic." The girls so far (we are only on day 2) have been able to keep this rule in mind and follow it. They understand that Jackie is checking on their behavior and will report back to Santa about whether they are naughty or nice.

I found the oldest several times throughout the day standing at the dinner table (as Jackie was positioned in a bowl on the dinner table for the time being) talking to Jackie. I heard her mentioning things that she wanted for Christmas and I heard her talking to Jackie as if she was a best friend. In some ways it was super cute to see that our daughter was taking it seriously that Jackie would take messages back to Santa. And in other ways sorta creepy that our daughter was talking to the elf doll so seriously. But either way our tradition is continuing in our home and we are excited that the holiday season is upon us yet again. We hope that Jackie will be bringing a few fun things again this year to do, as well as playing a few pranks on us.