12/7

This morning Joy decided to warm up with a nice marshmallow bubble bath.

Here's what really happened... I fell asleep early last night. I woke up at 5:30 to go to the bathroom and suddenly remembered Joy.  I went into the living room (only to find each kid on the floor asleep from the "Christmas tree camp out").  I stepped over the sleeping bodies and reached for Joy... And she wasn't there.  Brian had moved her to my bathroom and said that even if the boys couldn't find her, at least she will have moved.  (He couldn't care less about this whole elf business, but he knows I do so he helps me out in little ways like this.  In other news, my husband is awesome.) so anyway, then it all came to me. Since I was about to take a shower, I thought Joy might want to do the same and there you have it.

Moving on to our advent calendar... Sigh. This winter storm has thrown an icy road wrench in my advent activity plans.  We were supposed to stay at the Gaylord tonight and do the ICE show tomorrow… but we needed to stay home.  We had freezing rain/sleet all Thursday night and there is about an inch of ice covering the roads and it's not supposed to get above freezing until tomorrow afternoon.  I LOVE the Gaylord, especially at Christmastime, so I was fairly disappointed when I realized that we needed to cancel. But I moved some things around and it has been just fine.  This morning the boys got to open another activity present and it was a perfect one for being stranded in the house - another Shrinky Dink tree!

We colored the Shrinky Dinks and decorated the tree skirt. 

And I chose the elf just so I could color him with the correct color scheme... ☺️ 

They LOVED the one we did last year, so I was super excited to find another version of it online.  It went over just as well this year and it turned out great. 

They have gone outside a couple of times - Hudson threw a "snowball" (translation - ice chunk) and hit Reed in the eye and then Hudson slipped and hit the back of his head on the ice covered driveway.  Now we're watching TV… it's much safer. :)