meet jingles

On November 30th, we heard the doorbell and went to answer the door and all we found was a package from the North Pole! Santa had dropped it off so quickly! We opened our package and inside we found: pajamas, slippers, treats, AND... Jingles the elf! Santa had sent one of his elves to come live with us until Christmas! {Jingles} would stay at our house during the day to make sure we were being good and then at night he goes back to the North Pole to tell Santa how we are doing. Every morning he brought us a special treat or activity to do that day!

A few of our favorites were:

*Making North Pole pancakes:: Jingles brought us the food coloring and toppings and we made Santas, Christmas trees, and Lightning McQueen for Nolan.

 *Christmas Crafts:: Caitlin colored a pillowcase, we all worked on the little gingerbread house and we also did a few other crafts and card making and cooking project throughout the month.

*Visiting the festival of trees:: We went with Christine and her kids and spent a few hours running around from tree to tree and still didn't even see all of them!

*Growing our own candy canes:: Jingles told us exactly how to grow our own candy canes like they do in the North Pole! Here’s what you need to do…

1. Put the magic seeds in a cup.
2. Cover the seeds with some ice cubes from your freezer. You can fill it up to the top.
3. Sprinkle on some magical North Pole snow.
4. Now put the cup in the closet.
5. You have to leave it in there for the WHOLE DAY and you can’t peek! Candy canes are VERY shy when they are growing and if they don’t have their privacy, they wouldn’t grow.
6. After one day, your magical seeds will grown into swirly candy canes!

Ours turned out amazing and it was very magical!

*Driving through the lights at Thanksgiving Point:: We put pillows and blankets in the trunk and packed all the kids back there to drive through.

*Building a gingerbread house:: We were all very hands-on in the process of our wonderful gingerbread house.

*Riding the Polar Express:: We got to ride the Polar Express all the way to the North Pole and see Santa! It was awesome! We read the story of the Polar Express the night before then the next morning Jingles brought us magic gold tickets. On the train sang songs and got a cookie and hot chocolate. Then once we made it to the North Pole Santa came on the train to say hi and gave us each a jingle bell. It was our most successful Santa encounter yet.. no tears and he even got a hug from Caitlin!

*Jesus' birthday party:: We read a book and I told the kids the whole story of the Nativity. Then we acted it out using our little nativity and we played a Nativity trivia game where the kids got to take turns picking a question out of the bag and answering it. Then we baked cupcakes for baby Jesus!
 

*New Christmas Sunday outfits:: December 21st, the primary children sang and Caitlin did a lovely job. Nolan made an ornament for us with his handprint in nursery and he was so excited to come home and hang it on the tree.


*Seeing the lights at temple square:: We went on December 23rd with the Meads and Stewart and Lorraine and it was packed! We got dinner and ate it as we rode up on the Frontrunner train. It was a fun change of pace! Then we went to Temple Square and admired the lights amongst the million other people there. Then we realized that we had to catch the 9 PM train or else we'd be stuck there until 10:30! So we literally ran to catch the next trax train and then transferred over to the front runner. It was exciting!