Hello friends!  So excited to share the adventures of our Elf on the Shelf, Gracie with you today.  I need to give a shout out to my grandmother and Aunt Carol who shared the Elf on the Shelf craze with our family last Christmas.  I admit that I was originally against adding in this tradition, but I am really glad that we decided to do it!  The girls LOVED Gracie, but I’m pretty sure that Chris and I had even more fun with Gracie’s antics.

For those of you who are new to my blog, both of our girls are on the autism spectrum.  They are very literal and we usually know exactly what they are thinking, as it just spills out!  Hailey cracked me up with her almost daily comments about what Gracie had done.  I’ll add her thoughts below the pictures.

WHAT A “CUTIE”

This was our first morning with Gracie and the girls thought she was pretty funny. Hailey jumped in on the fun and continued to take parts of the orange away during the day.

GOING FOR A SWIM

“Good thing she didn’t eat all the Cheerios, Skylar would have been mad!”-Hailey

ENJOYING THE VIEW FROM ABOVE

“That’s hilarious!  She must not be afraid of heights like you are mom!”-Hailey

HIDE AND SEEK

TAKING A BUBBLE BATH

We went down to Phoenix for an overnight trip and the girls didn’t want to take Gracie with us.  They wanted to see what she would do while we were out of town. This presented a challenge for Chris and me.  Gracie got all settled into her bubble bath right after the kids got in the car.  When we returned home the next day, the marshmallows were pretty stiff from sitting out for about 24 hours.  Hailey said, “Well that can’t be comfortable!  Why would she want to bathe in hard marshmallows?”

TAKING OVER

“I can not believe that Gracie knocked the angel off the tree!  That should definitely put her on the naughty list!”-Hailey

SUCH A JOKER

CELEBRATING SKYLAR’S BIRTHDAY

“I can’t believe Gracie didn’t eat all of her cake!  It was SO good!  Can I have the rest?”-Hailey

JUST A SIP

“Well that’s a waste of a perfectly good straw!”-Hailey

A LITTLE LIGHT READING

This is a really blurry picture, but Hailey’s comments were some of my favorite.  She said, “Oh my word!  Why is she reading Twilight?  Who told her those books were good?”

MISSING SANTA

REPLACING OUR STOCKINGS WITH UNDERWEAR

“Wow!  I hope those are clean!!!”-Hailey

SUGAR HIGH

GREEN MILK

“EWWW!  How’d she do that?  That is really weird!”-Hailey

VANDALIZING

“What a waste of toilet paper!  You’d better save that, I’m sure we’re going to need it!”-Hailey

Thanks for reading about our adventures with Gracie!  The girls were excited that she left a note saying goodbye and that she would be back next year.

Blessings for a great New Year for all of you!

Make it great!

JuJu