Finding time to decorate the house was difficult this year. Since we were in San Jose for most of the better part of the 1st weekend in December and Nathan had to work late most nights the following week, we decorated in stages. The first thing we did was get the tree inside and set up the train set. Bryce had a lot of fun with this and has learned to operate it on his own with supervision of course. He helped to decorate the tree and set out the other Christmas decorations. His favorite ornaments were the plain colored balls. We weren't planning on using any of these since we have enough ornaments that have special meaning to us, but he insisted on hanging one for each of us.
One new tradition we started this year, thanks to Auntie Em, is reading the Elf on a Shelf book with our own little elf. For those of you that have never heard of this, it is a great book that comes with your own little elf. The elf, which you name, sits and watches to see if the kids have been naughty or nice all day long. Then, when they go to bed, he flies to the North Pole to report the behavior to Santa. Then, in the morning he flies back and sits in a new spot. Every morning the kids must find the elf. Bryce didn't really understand how to select a name for his elf. We kept telling him he had to give the elf a name and asked him what we should call him. He kept saying his name was "a name". We decided to list all of the Thomas the Train characters and have his select a name from those. The elf ended up with the name Duncan the Elf. When Bryce is acting naughty, we remind him that Duncan the Elf is watching and he responds saying that he wants Santa to bring him presents. This has helped to correct his behavior a number of times.
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