Elf on the Shelf, Tree and other holiday musings

Again, now that the holiday is pretty much over, I'm sharing it.  Oh well.  Better late than never right?  (Its probably good to tell you now that my December Daily cover is done.  The rest of it?  Not so much.)

We did Elf on the Shelf last year but Nick didn't really get it.  This year, he gets it.

We read the book to him and officially named our elf.  Meet Ziggy.

Ziggy moves around from time to time, but not every night.  He mainly keeps watch over the brand new (and very expensive) train that circles the bottom of the tree.  Nick is very into trains.  Like, he dreams about them.  (When he's not dreaming about trash trucks.....)  This train, he saw it at Costco and HAD to have it.  My parents got it for him.  But its one of those really good trains.  Bryan knows all about it because he had one too and it takes a genius to set up. 

Look, I can build a computer, fix a computer whatever.  But I can't put this freaking train on the tracks and get it to run right.  So I'm 'special'.  

The actual set up of the train went like this.

First.  Dig out the fake tree.

Start putting the sections together all the while adding bits of wood here and there to even it out.  My dad is a bit of a perfectionist engineer and well..... anyone who knows engineeers can figure out the rest.

Getting there.   We have to check the lights.

Ooooohhhhhhh. Ahhhhhhhh.

With a little help from his assistant they got it all figured out.

Another little adjustment on the other side.....

Finally, the train got set up.  Oh yeah, the tree skirt is in the storage unit too so we used a red tablecloth.  Pretty inventive eh?

And this is where he stayed all day.

and into the night.....

still there.....

And then we got up the next morning and did it all again.  He roped Rascal into sitting there watching it with him.  Rascal just wanted to know if he had food.

Kind of reminds me about their first Christmas together.....