A weekly list of things accomplished, enjoyed, learned, tried and remembered.
1. Elf Extravaganza. Our church hosted a really fun event for the 5th and 6th graders called Elf Extravaganza. The kiddos can dress up like elves and everything (games/activites) is themed around the movie “Elf”. Grayson had a BLAST! The only part he didn’t enjoy was an eating relay contest. He was supposed to gulp down a cup of cookie sprinkles. At first this seemed thrilling to him (he LOVES sweets–like his Momma), but after the first swallow his face turned a pale shade of green. Next thing I knew he had abandoned the contest and was racing as fast as he could to the bathroom. His tolerance for the “four food groups” are not the same as Buddy the Elf.
2. Par-TAY! We host an open house type Christmas party at our home each year. It’s our opportunity to catch up with friends, family and co-workers and we love it. Each year we invite “the big guy” to join us and everyone young and old enjoys getting to hang out with him for a bit.
3.Are you Naughty or Nice? A few years ago Super Rockstar found this cool website called portablenorthpole.com (PNP) It’s a website where you can create a special email that your child will receive from Santa. All you do is sign up for an account, spend a few minutes choosing which video you want your child to see (they have several choices) and then customize it with some information and photos. At the end of the video Santa lets them know if they have made the naughty or nice list (you get to choose that in the information input). It’s so funny to watch our boys anxiety build as Santa very dramatically unveils the results. They do an AMAZING job of creating a very realistic message and our boys look forward to it every year. They both made the nice list this year (whew!). All I’m sayin is that Santa has loosened his standards a bit on what is considered “nice”.
4.A Trip to the North Pole. Another fun tradition we started a few years ago was going to the North Pole. It’s located up on the side of the mountain (if you are unfamiliar with life in Colorado Springs–when we refer to “the mountain” it’s always in reference to Pikes Peak)off the highway toward Woodland Park. It’s geared a lot toward younger kids, but my boys still have a blast going to visit Santa in his “house”, there’s a lot of big kid rides, and then we always get to have hot chocolate and visit the gift shop. It’s a really fun family experience. They are open year round (except Christmas day and a few days after–duh Santa’s a little busy).
5. Jumanji. If you loved the first one, you will love this one too. We REALLY enjoyed it. My only disappointment was there was a lot of unnecessary and over use of curse words. I wish they would start offering bleeped out versions of movies so that my children (and I) don’t have to hear potty mouths. It didn’t add anything at all to the characters and instead made me cringe. But, the overall story and action were AWESOME! Seeing Dwayne Johnson impersonating Danny DeVito and Kevin Hart impersonating Danny Glover is priceless.
Hope you have a great week!