A special friend has returned.....

We came home tonight from Waynesville, North Carolina after a great visit with our family and found that our favorite elf, Buddy was back! Buddy came last year after Nana and Papa brought him to us and we began a new tradition! There is a book called "The Elf on the Shelf" and each family who has an elf gets to give him a special name. The elf then begins to help Santa by flying home to the North Pole each night to let him know how the Harper children are behaving! Beckett and Helen named our elf "Buddy"! He shows up after Thanksgiving and he will be with us until Santa comes on Christmas Eve! Each day when he returns to our home, he will find a different place to sit so that he can keep a good eye on us! Tonight when we returned home, he was in a basket way up on top of a bookshelf! We are excited to have him back with us for the Christmas season!

We had a great Thanksgiving celebration with both sides of our family! Here are all of the Harper cousins eating lunch on Thanksgiving day!
We played a game of pin the pilgrim hat on the turkey and Beckett was WAY off!
A picture of Beckett when he removed his blindfold and saw where the hat was! Also a picture of Lillie with her Oreo turkey that we made with the kids! The next picture is of many of the girls as they were playing. I wanted to put this one because it was the only one with Marley! She was napping most of the time that we were there, so I didn't get any other pictures of her!

We traveled to North Carolina on Thursday afternoon to be with my side of the family. Here is a picture of most everyone playing a game of Trivial Pursuit...another fun tradition!

My aunt was asked to serve on an art commission for their town and they were given the task to find someone to create a sculpture. After a LOT of work, she was excited that they finally erected the sculpture about a month ago in downtown Waynesville! We went down to see it on Friday and took a lot of pictures! It is really a great piece of artwork and we are proud of Auntie Mame for all of her hard work to make it come together for their town!