Elf in Peril. And some letters to Santa.

Today's biggest news is that Bob has arrived!  Will was all worried that he would not come because I had not finished putting up all the Christmas decorations.  But I finished the tree!  Doesn't she look so much better this year?  I moved her to another corner because I refuse to have another Christmas with our hideous vertical blinds in all my Christmas pics.  I also bought a clearance tree skirt after Christmas last year to replace the 2 yards of flannel I've been wrapping around our tree base for the past 9 years, a la Charlie Brown.

Bob clearly appreciated the new tree skirt, because he chose it as his hiding spot this morning.  Will looked all over for him before school, then moped for awhile because he thought he didn't come, then spotted him and excitedly yelled for Anna.  Anna ran over, spotted cute little Bob....and then...

SHE PICKED HIM UP!!

So that's a huge no-no in the Elf on the Shelf tradition.  Will was horrified.  Anna looked confused.  I tried really hard not to laugh.  Bob was not visibly harmed by the quick cuddle, but we will see if he has enough magic left to fly back to the North Pole tonight.  Will is not holding out much hope and has been giving Anna the stink-eye all day.

As for the rest of the morning, Anna had to go to school for a program rehearsal, so I had the house to myself.  I had a huge list of stuff to tackle, but ended up spending most of the day running between the house, the mechanic, and Auto Zone in an attempt to get my car fixed.  Not fun.

This evening, we went to Will's cub scout den meeting.  The boys (and Anna) made cards for hospitalized children and talked about Citizenship.

Thank goodness Anna was there; no one else was going to use up that pink paper.  Can you tell what this is?

A gingerbread man.  Of course.

After we returned home, I asked them to write their letters to Santa.  Santa wants those ideas nailed down early, and he told me he wasn't thrilled that Anna switched up her list after he did his Black Friday shopping.

Previously (as in 24 hours ago), Anna wanted a Doc McStuffins checkup center, a changing table for her baby doll, and a toy reindeer.  I told her to pick one big item and negotiated that Santa could do the changing table and maybe Nana and Papa could handle Doc McStuffins.  She finally agreed...then changed up her list:

(Written by Will, illustrated by Anna.)

I don't know where that crib idea came from, and there's no room for any more furniture in Anna's room.  Hopefully she'll forget that one before Christmas Day.

Will started off with a long first draft:

He was clearly dreaming when he wrote phone.  After conferring with some buddies at school and church, he decided it was best not to be too greedy and whittled his list down to the essentials:

A hermit crab and a reindeer bell.  That should be interesting.  I think I need to get with Santa and institute a "no live animals" policy before things get out of hand.  Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I put a puppy on my Christmas list as a kid at least twice, as well as a brother, and I didn't get either one.

So that's the scoop around here.  Tomorrow--Anna's Christmas program!