Elfie, A Visit to the North Pole and ornaments Day 3 of our Countdown to Christmas

See the end of this post to make these North Pole Ornaments

This morning Elfie surprised us with what daddy thought was a mountain. Sierra however yelled, "Look Elfie made us a Christmas tree"! I guess Elphie should have used all the Mountain Dew instead of Diet Coke and our our mountain would have really looked like a green tree :)

Elfie also brought a very special invitation with him for the girls.

Since our Day 3 for our countdown to Christmas match box said the North Pole I had to improvise and say we were going to make Christmas Decorations tonight instead when Sierra opened the number 3 matchbox.

Daddy had to return to the emergency room this morning to get an ultrasound so we all had to get ready to go to the North Pole without him, in the hopes that he would be able to join us when he was finished.

We arrived at the North Pole early

and played around with the puppet theater,

the dress up clothes,

and then daddy arrived just in time for our 12:00 tour. The girls were all dressed up and went running to him as he signed in. We were so happy he could make it!

Before getting into our tour I must tell you that despite the fun the girls had I think this day was very over priced for what we got. I have no problem paying the close to $22 per child but paying $22 per adult was a rip off for the 4 adults that attended. There was also a lot of waiting around and the elves all seemed a little disorganized and showed up late for our guided tour. The worst was having to wait 20 minutes from our schedule time to get pictures with Santa. The girls were getting very restless.  Luckily Santa did a great job and was worth the wait.

The North Pole  had many different cabins all decorated. Some you visit on the tour and some you are free to visit after your tour.

We started our tour off with a visit to Elf School. Here the girls learned how to guide the reindeer during take off and landing, how to elf dance and smile like an elf :) After leaving here they gained magic in their fingertips for use late in their tour.

The girls learning the commands to guide the reindeer

Practicing their elf smiles

Next we headed off to the Sym-Funny where the kids all got to play with musical instruments and do the reindeer pokey.

Then we went off to the inventors station where we disturbed a very tired elf but she quickly woke up to show the kids some of her inventions. Here is where the kids had to use their magic elf fingers to create the static power below.

Next we headed to the post office to mail the Santa letters Elfie left for them this morning. The girls got their letters stamped at the post office and then were able to mail them directly to Santa.

Next we were off to see Mrs Claus. She had been busy doing the laundry but took a break to read everyone a story.

Sierra sneaking a stir of Mrs Claus's cookies

Then it was our time for pictures with Santa. Luckily the girls and Grammy Sue had the dress up clothes to keep us entertained again for 20 minutes while we waited for our scheduled time for our picture with Santa.

Who is that silly looking elf?

Finally we got to see Santa :) He did a great job. He recalled the girls names and knew a little about each child and gave the girls a gift (that cost $5 per child to have him deliver the gift we wrapped and brought...your other choice was having a $35 bear delivered. Had I realized we would have been in the room with Santa a lone I wouldn't have bothered even with the gift delivery. I just didn't want to answer the question, "why did that girl get a gift from Santa and not me"? I caved to the pressure). Santa was really good but did they really need to charge for that???

After seeing Santa our tour was complete and we were free to walk around to some of the other cabins we didn't see on the tour. Our first stop was to decorate cookies.

Grammy Sue, Daddy and Nana Diana decorating their cookies with the girls

Aayla is all finished hers...doesn't the elf look impressed?

Sierra is very proud of her cookie

Next we were off to the gift wrap station where the girls got to use stamps and ink pads to make a piece of wrapping paper to take home.

The last cabin was a toy making cabin where they had build a bears for purchase to build. They did have a large stuffed toy that everyone could help stuff for those who didn't want to buy a build a bear...thankfully! We quickly gave it a try and left before the next child came in to purchase a bear!

Then our day was over and it was time to say goodbye to the North Pole. The girls had a lot of fun and the North Pole was nicely decorated but as I mentioned...paying $44 for the girls would have been worth it but paying close to $132.oo for us, Grammy Sue and Nana Diana to come was WAY over priced!

We went home to make our countdown to Christmas activity which was switched to making ornaments. I saw THIS cute ornament yesterday on a new blog I stumbled across and decided to make them.

Here is ours and how to make them:

All you need is some paint/brushes, 2 tounge depressors, a Popsicle stick, permanent marker, scissors, pipe cleaner or string to hang and a hot glue gun.

Follow the drawing below and cut one tounge depressor and Popsicle stick as shown.

Paint everything white, allow to dry and paint red stripes on the uncut tounge depressor.

Next with a permanent marker write "North Pole" on the large arrow piece. On the two smaller Popsicle pieces, write home on one, then school or daycare or Grammy's house etc on the 2nd one. Add the distance to get there and an arrow showing which direction to go. We added pipe cleaners for the hangers but you could use any ribbon or string.

We also made some Christmas tree decorations out of Popsicle sticks tonight too. You just cut some Popsicle sticks into 5 different lengths and paint them green. Paint a tounge depressor brown. Allow to dry. Glue the green pieces to the brown trunk from smallest at the top to the largest piece at the bottom (I like to use the hot glue gun for this). Glue on a star to the top, and then sequins to decorate the branches. Add something to hang. 

My girls enjoyed making these trees a lot :)