Move over NORAD.....our Santa Tracker for 2011 ;)

I posted this photo on Tumblr earlier and said I love my family's creative hive mind. It's thought us up and built us some wonderful awesome crazy projects in the past...including some of my burlesque acts. But this week it worked on Project Christmas Eve.

We like maps. It was one of my things when we moved from the UK to the USA that I wanted the kids (and the grown ups) to remember where we came from and (haha) to remember that there's a big old world out there and it's important. I didn't want us forget everything we know and gain a Kellie Pickler knowledge of the world ("is France a country?" "I thought Europe was a country, I know they speak French there" "Hungary....that's a country?!?....I've heard of Turkey").

So anyway, we have this big map in the dining room that we bought in IKEA:

 

We also use the NORAD Santa Tracker every Christmas Eve to see where Father Christmas has got to. I can't remember when we started using this, I think my brother first told us about it, but it's been most of the kids' lives. And every year it gets better, with more updates and videos...

Well, on Monday, Goth Child looked up at our map and said:

"Wouldn't it be cool to have a little Father Christmas we could move around the map on Christmas Eve?"

So on Monday evening me and Mr D put our heads together and worked out how we could do this, without ruining the fabric map.....and yesterday I made this:

 

And yes, I left him on Christmas Island to see if the kids would notice....since then he's flown back up to the North Pole, though I keep wanting to fly him to Finland as I grew up thinking Father Christmas lived in Lapland.....until I watched all the movies and now know better.

Our Santa Tracker is 3 small round magnets - one magnet behind the map on the reverse of the fabric, one on the front to hold it in place and one attached to that, secured by magnetism and hot glue in case any little fingers pull it apart. I typed 'Santa' and 'Reindeer' into Google images to get the pic and made sure that the pic was flying east to west (we didn't want Father Christmas having to fly backwards all day as we moved him). I resized a pic from the Burl Ives Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer printed it out and strengthed it by glueing it onto two pieces of cardboard before cutting it out.

Goth Child and (and mainly) Melchett now have the responsibility on Christmas Eve (will they be up at 5am to plot Father Christmas dropping his first presents on Tonga? Naaaahh) to check NORAD's Santa Tracker throughout the day and move our little Father Christmas, reindeer and sleigh accordingly....and get especially excited about 5pm when Father Christmas will be delivering to all our friends and family in the UK.

 

But obviously we'll all have to be fast asleep by the time he gets to Phoenix, because he knows when you are sleeping.....and he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake! Just saying...

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OK Christmas 2012, that's a wrap.