you had me at “pickle”.

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Meet Penelope–THE PICKLE FINDER!

I can certainly tell you that our first “Christmas Pickle” experience was a cute one!  Also, I can’t believe Penelope (at 2 and a half) remembered that she would have to ‘find the pickle’ first to start the unwrapping process. Seeing as how her baby brother can’t walk yet, and was only interested in the taste of tissue and wrapping paper, she had a slight  advantage this year.

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Great story and Fabulous pictures!

Without giving too much away, the story tells an adorable tale of how “Pickle Elf” creates the tradition of ‘finding the pickle’ and learns the true meaning of giving during the holiday season. Very sweet! (Considering all ‘kids do these days’ is count their presents!)

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First Penelope wanted to “read” it to her brother…

We decided to read the kids the Christmas Pickle Tradition book on the morning of Christmas Eve, knowing that we would be out late eating our 7 courses of seafood (as I teased you with in an earlier post), and they’d most likely be snoring when we got back home. We kept the book on display under our tree until we were ready to read the story…and let them have the first go at it.

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but he was turning the pages too quickly…

…so then Daddy read it to them!

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Santa hung the Pickle right under Penelope’s Olaf ornament.  He must’ve known she would look there!

Mommy and Daddy had to leave the pickle ornament out, next to the cookies & milk so that Santa would know he needed to hide it on the tree!

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“Tadaaaa!” she yelled when she found it–and naturally,  yanked it right off the tree!

This year, we started a new tradition that we will ALWAYS keep.  Just like the Elf on the Shelf tradition, the kids will look forward to reading The Christmas Pickle Tradition book before Santa comes each year, and racing to the tree on Christmas morning.  If you haven’t heard of it yet–you now have! (AND–you have roughly 354 days  to invest in one!)  Head over to http://www.ChristmasPickleTradition.com , where you can learn more about the sweet (or sour) tradition, and buy a giftset for yourself–or someone you love!  We were lucky enough to receive an autographed copy in the mail to try out, and it’s something we will look forward to “unpacking” each year with our christmas decorations!

**A special thanks to Tammy Lee Dwyer for keeping my kids glued to each and every page–and for our gift set! Penelope has always been nicknamed “Mrs. Pickles”, so this was perfect for our family!**