"Schafer Family Kickoff the Christmas Season Day"

Nathan and I decided to spend a day doing nothing but celebrating this wonderful season with our kids. I love the holidays! The main reason for that is the good family feel....boy did we get that today!

Our day started at Gardner Village for Christmas card picture taking (the ones I chose are not posted below) and an elf scavenger hunt

The kids look for this guy every year. They want to get a picture of Mom and Dad under the mistletoe

Bailey is showing us her best "Step Dad pose"

Elves!

Bailey trying on a cute piggy hat.....if you can't tell Bailey gets into "posing mode" when we are at Gardner Village

Courtney hanging at an Elf campsite

We were a bit chilly, would have been nice if this Elf was handing out real hot cocoa

Landon was giggling over the Elf who fell while ice skating

Courtney found an elf on the scavenger list

This is the last elf we needed to complete the scavenger hunt! The girls are too old to turn it in for a free cookie, to everyone but Mom and Dad. They did such a good job finding the Elves we took them to Schmidts to pick out a cookie!

Then we took the cookies home and made hot cocoa to go with them. While we snacked on those, we played clue as a family.

Tayler was super proud of her choice for cookies (so was her Dad).

Landon really enjoyed his snack!

Even the dogs got a treat! It's a teeth cleaning bone!

Afterwards we watched movies....Santa Clause 1, 2 and 3!

THEN (yes we are still going).....we made Gingerbread houses from Graham Crackers. Derek, Jill and Tenley joined us for this part.

Tenley's House with a little help from Jill

Bailey's house

Tayler's house

Courtney's House

Landon's House

Once the houses were built and pictures were taken....we tore them down to eat with egg nog while we wrote letters to Santa. (who knows what Jill said to Bailey to make her pull that face!)

We had a really great day! The kids have been talking about it all week!