Winter has officially begun! We arrived at the cottage this afternoon and half way there we saw tons of snow on the ground and blowing around.
I have honestly never seen my kids so excited. They ran out of the car and started rolling down the big hill in front of our house. Then they ran in the garage and put old skis on their feet and got out the old too small snowboards and started “skiing” down the same hill.
My three kids are total ski buffs. I could almost picture them all going off to teach skiing in BC one day and dropping out of University. Not going to happen!! But I can still picture them wanting to do it. And they can on Christmas break.
Snow=Skiing. And they are all officially obsessed. I am so happy that they have a passion for this that comes entirely from their own doing. Yahoo!And it is cottage friendly-double yay!
Right now they are in the kitchen making hot chocolate in this gift they were given last year that I had thought they had forgotten about and was going to regift. They are all sitting around the counter with their mugs filled with cinnamon and chocolate and syrup? That is so cute (between yelling at each other to shut up).
And we started a new tradition today…I am so proud of us!!! We succumbed and bought and ELF on the Shelf like the millions of others we know. There are many I know who do this but is was sister Savvy’s real inspiration who got me really interested because she does it the bestJ
So we named our Elf…not sweet elf..or nice Christmas Elf… The kids named ours: SnowBallz.
Very indicative of our family indeed!!! The boys wanted to name it just “Ballz” but we said no.
You see our kids, like most kids are not allowed to swear in our home. If they do then they get charged a dollar each time. Each month I collect some, which makes my budget a bit better over time. But we are also not very strict. Theree are certain “bad” words that we just allow and turn our back on. Basket C I call it.
So Balls is a very popular word in our home. They think it is bad and very funny. And we accept it. I just never realized that it will be part of our Christmas traditions for generations to come!
So I am doing Elf on the Shelf but adjusted to our way.
Elf hidden at night and not in morning (hello I am sleeping at 6am or very groggy and crabby!)
Elf will not just be just hidden my us. Every family member and Didi will get a turn on the same day each week to shake it up a bit.
Elf will sometimes just be hidden, sometimes bring a treat, sometimes teach a value, sometimes deliver an important message to us, sometimes have us doing good deeds etc… Our elf is going to be super active!!!
So let’s see how I do with this new tradition. Sounds pretty industrious and energy sucking but also soooooo much fun. The kids were very excited and it reminded me of the importance of traditions. As I mentioned before I am great at weekly, daily, monthly traditions and for some weird reason less good at the really traditional important ones.
Sure I do Christmas and Easter and every other holiday cheerfully and wonderfully. But often …I can’t say I enjoy every minute of it even if I pull them off super well.
But this Elf..our elf…SnowBallz? I think he is going to change that. I think he is going to kick that hidden Scrooge right out of me and bring a bit of Heaven inside.
One thing I am convinced of: I will appreciate Elf more than advent calendars. My kids tend to be the type that eat all the chocolate in the first 5 days…how fun is that??? I know I know my entire fault to allow such monstrosities, but again Basket C for me.
Basket A is full enough with loving your siblings, making sure to spend every weekend at the cottage with your parents, getting into the best schools and staying there, having chores, cooking with us, hugging and cuddling with us often, and respecting your life enough to not put it in danger too often. These are expected of you if you are living with us. Just do it!
Basket B is also pretty full of such things as wear deodorant if you can so you don’t smell, try not to scream and shout every moment of every day, try to eat wheat brown bread opposed to white, hand in assignments that are legible usually and try as hard as possible to clean the wax out of your ears every so often. Please try hard at these behaviors but we will still let you live with us if you fail.
So I look forward to our elf and what it will bring us.
I am already excited for next Saturday Dec 1st!!!!!!
(Normally I could not care less about this stuff)See! Retuning has begun!
