It's a rainy day and I slept in.  It was 8:47am before I woke up.  First thing I did was reach for my advent calendar so I could open another door.  21 more days until Christmas!

Barbara and I sat on her bed talking about this day and tomorrow.  The plan for tomorrow is for Bradley Charles to be born.  I will be in school and I may have to wait until he is home before I get to see him.

We talked about what I could have for breakfast.  As usual I wanted oatmeal.  Barbara wanted grits.  Barbara agreed to help me fix my oatmeal after I got dressed. 

I went into my bedroom and I saw a book standing semi-open on my bed.  It was the Elf on the Shelf book! 

I quickly looked around my room and my sharp eyes saw the Elf hanging over my mutton busting picture.   It was just last might that I was wondering when he would show up.   I asked Barbara to come.  She said she would be there in a couple of minutes, for me to go ahead and pick out my clothes for the day.  I said, I need you to come now, it's important.  In just a few seconds she was walking to my room, asking what I needed.  I showed her the book and her eye opened wide.  I said the Elf is here and I pointed to him up high on the top shelf of my desk.   She took our picture.

I named him Joey.  Then I changed it to Jack.  Jack it is.  Barbara read the book outloud while I got dressed.  Then I picked up my pjs and out them in the dirty clothes.  Jack is watching me and will report to Santa.  I better be nice, not naughty.

I read the sports page of the newspaper while I ate my oatmeal.

We talked about the little lit Christmas trees GGM, GGF, and Barbara made and we wondered if Mrs. Cat would like to have one.  We decided she would, so we spent part of the morning working on making two little trees.  Each tree requires only three part: 6 hangers, 30 feet of garland, and a string of 50 multi-colored lights.  Plus some tape and wire to hold it all together. 

  It is a rather long process so I only worked so long before I was ready to go play.

   We got the trees taped and wired together.  Then we had to stop because the last step is to wrap garland around the tree frame and we don't have the garland.   Well, we had some garland, but it had been smashed and didn't look good.  We want to get some nice looking garland.

But before I left to play, I did help by writing Chili  Dec 2016 on three  packages of chili that we are going to freeze.  Some days I am a very helpful boy.

I wanted some cornbread to eat with Taco Soup.  But while the cornbread was cooking I had an offer to to for a run with Anthony and his older brother, Curtis, who is in the Navy.  He is visiting until Monday.  We ran to Smoothie King and had a smoothie.  It was sort of raining so I was sort of wet most of the day.  I did change clothes once when we thought I would stay inside  and play with Alyssa but before long I was outside playing basketball.

I came inside at 3:50pm to get ready for church school, which is from 4:15 to 5:30pm.  Again I had to change out of wet clothes.   Mommy dropped me off and she bought garland for my trees before picking me up at 5:30.

At home we put garland on the trees. I will give one to Mrs. Cat tomorrow.  I think she will like it especially since I helped my GGM make it.