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--- Christmas Elf Rant (http://www.gatchamania.net/threadid.php?threadid=3895)
Posted by Buffy on 24-12-2011 at 17:28:
Christmas Elf Rant
Okay, not so much a rant as a "Doh!".
Every year we have little Christmas Elves visit our boys.
Specifically these Christmas Elves: http://www.elf-magic.com/
For those who don't know about them. If kids leave out Elf treats and letters of request, the elves will appear about a month before Xmas and spend the month visiting the children, monitoring behavior for Santa, 'helping' the family prepare for Xmas, and just behaving like little mischievous elves when no one is around to catch them. Christmas Eve, they leave with Santa to go back to the North Pole for the year.
It wasn't my idea originally. Kids at school educated them about these things, and so I spent a week with mysterious letters and elf snacks all around my house requesting they come visit and sad little kids not knowing what was going on.
So once I was educated too, they came to visit and have come for the last 3 years in a row.
Since the elves leave tonight on Christmas Eve, last night the Elves had a big elfy blow out.
They were up last night decorating the boys' new gingerbread house creation with powdered sugar. They made snow angels in the sugar and left sugary footprints all over the house. They also added all mom's 'rich' candy (high caffine/high sugar) to the decoration.
I woke up this morning, and came downstairs to find the boys had eaten all of my candy, and attempted to clean up the powdered sugar (originally contained neatly to the table) with my vacuum.
There had been an entire 20 oz bag's worth of powdered sugar on that table.
Note: While vacuums work fine with cleaning up little elf foot prints, in large quantities, powdered sugar is fine grained enough to get sucked through the nozel, transformed to particle dust form and be shot out of the exhaust back into the air, creating a fine blanket sugary coating on every surface in the kitchen.
Well...the kids did /attempt/ to clean up after the elves....
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Posted by KT1972 on 24-12-2011 at 17:48:
Can't blame them for trying! (Giggles) reminds me of the time my (then 2yo) son "rescued" my mobile phone from out of the toilet!!
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Posted by Springie on 24-12-2011 at 17:48:
Bwahahahaha...*ahem* trying not to laugh, but that story is adorable! I never did the elf thing, but I know what you're talking about...my kids are too old for it now.
However, they are SO excited they can hardly stand it!
My son dug holes in two of his presents trying to look inside...the tops look perfect, but if you look underneath...
Looks fine from above...
But underneath...
Looks ok from a distance...
But under the bow...
I gave him a lot of guilt about it...but I have been laughing about it behind his back...
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Posted by Springie on 24-12-2011 at 18:08:
Buffy- please tell me you took pics of the sugar fiasco! You will cherish them in years to come!
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Posted by Becky Rock on 24-12-2011 at 19:09:
I've never heard of this elf thing. Is it regional?
In Germany, they had a tradition of leaving a shoe outside their door on, if I remember right, the 6th of December. The next morning, the shoe would have candy in it.
I never got an explanation about it.
I was smart enough to carefully take off the paper and replace it. hehe
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Posted by Transmute Jun on 24-12-2011 at 21:07:
Springie, I love those pictures! They had me 
!
Buffy, I hope the cleanup didn't take too long!
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Posted by Madilayn on 24-12-2011 at 21:32:
Oh dear - both Buffy and Springie! Kids will do it every time!!!
I hope everybody has a terrific Christmas - or whatever holiday you celebrate!
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Posted by green on 24-12-2011 at 23:18:
Oh, Buffy....and Springie!
What a crack up! You just gotta love kids! (says she who only has furkids)
The elves sound like a great tradition, Buffy - the time and effort involved will be appreciated, once your children are old enough to have children of their own and want to carry on with things they remember from their own childhoods.
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Posted by lborgia88 on 24-12-2011 at 23:27:
I feel for you, Buffy, having to deal with the mess but that is sooo funny! Yes, they did try to clean up afterwards -that has to count for something.
Springie, I love your son's "stealth" attempt at gift-peeking! 
Clearly it wasn't stealthy enough, though -how did he get caught?
Posted by gatchamarie on 26-12-2011 at 13:09:
Oh, Buffy and Springie! Your stories, and kids, are just adorable!
Springie ... thanks for sharing your photos! ... still giggling!!
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Posted by Springie on 26-12-2011 at 13:51:
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He had put a few presents under his little tree in his bedroom...and I was moving them back to the big tree for unwrapping...it looked like a rat had chewed through them! He isn't very sneaky, is he? LOL
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Posted by lborgia88 on 26-12-2011 at 19:16:
Ah, so if he'd just moved them back to the big tree himself, before you did, he might very well have gotten away with it!
My problem this year was discovering, shortly after putting gifts that I'd just wrapped (and I use of lot of that thin ribbon that you curl with scissors) under the tree, was that my new cat loves to chew and eat ribbon!
So, all the presents (one with some slightly chewed ribbon) that I'd wrapped got hastily moved to a bedroom that Sharpie's not allowed to go into. Except that the next day, the BF wasn't paying attention and let Sharpie into that room by mistake. Much ribbon chewed off and eaten! I was freaking out that my cat was going to die from an impacted bowel or some such thing. But very fortunately, within an hour, Sharpie proceeded to puke it all up. Unfortunately, despite all the hardwood or tiled floor available to him, he chose to puke on the palest-coloured carpet in the house.
Fortunately, the BF owns a carpet-cleaner...
Posted by gatchamarie on 27-12-2011 at 14:32:
Some way to discover that your new cat loves ribbon, LB! You surely have to keep such an event in mind next Christmas, and all the others to come!
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Posted by clouddancer on 05-01-2012 at 20:10:
It sounds like a few children and pets had great fun in the time leading up to Christmas getting into all sorts of mischief.
Buffy how old are your children? It sounds like a very interesting tradition. Almost makes me wish for children of my own.
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Posted by Buffy on 11-01-2012 at 03:22:
That was so classic LB. Perfect story fodder!
Clouddancer, they're grade school, the two of them. Just old enough and just young enough to be prime victims to mom's sense of holiday humor, though clearly they're learning.
I would probably advise a four legged child. All of the affection and little of the back talk. 
__________________
"Spider sense....tingling."
Posted by Buffy on 11-01-2012 at 03:29:
And oh...we did have one more exiting Elf moment.
This year, my elder son has started having suspicions about the validity of his elf. "Mom, are they just dolls that you and daddy move around?"
This troubled him one day a great deal, and so I asked him if he wanted an answer or if he would prefer the fun of the mystery. When faced with that option he definitely preferred the mystery. He said he'd figure it out on his own. He had a plan to find out the truth.
Putting the children to bed that night, I noticed he had put both elves into their makeshift basket bed surrounded by booby traps. I wondered if anyone would be caught in the boobytraps.
Never fear though, I got up in the middle of the night though and found little white footprints leading from my younger son's bed (where his elf was now sleeping with a suspicious white substance on his hands, feet, and mouth), allllll the way down the stairs to the living room where there was my older son's elf sprawled out in a sugar coma with a gingerbread man in his lap, and powdered sugar all over the table. The booby traps up in the bedroom were still apparently functional, so the elves bypassed them with no problems. Hubby got the boys up for school the next morning as I had a headache.
I heard, "Whisper whisper mumble?" *thump thump thump pitter patter feet * "Whisper, mumble MUMBLE???" *thump thump thump THUMP down the stairs* "Giggle Giggle Whooo! Hahaha Mumble MUMBLE!!" *Thumpity Thumpity back up the stairs * "Chatter chatter giggle chatter " *thumpity thumpity thumpity back down the stairs * Pause. Then: *whirrrrrrrrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr* vacuum cleaner on the stairs.
I giggled in my bed at all the sound effects, but the entertainment wasn't over. The husband comes in and informs me that the booby traps were a red herring. My son apparently demanded that dad present his hands for examination. In the boys' room is a black light. My resourceful child had laid a big flat lego mat on top of the elves' bed, which would have to be moved for them to get out of bed. He had coated the top of the mat with florescent marker. Anyone who touched the lego mat to move it would have florescent marker on their fingers that would show up under exposure to black light, much like the luminol uncovers blood stains on CSI. My husbands' hands were clean. Perhaps because the elves moved themselves? Or perhaps because florescent marker didn't make it to the sides or bottom edges of the lego mat where someone might be likely to grip when lifting?
I expect to be likewise interrogated when I get home. It's a good thing I wasn't a guilty party. We discovered through curious testing though that while florescent marker will readily transfer to human hands on contact from a slick markered surface like a lego mat no matter how many hours it has been there, it is almost impossible to remove it from porous human hands after contact is made. For the record? Water, soap, alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, industrial pumice, Goo Gone, and gasoline will NOT remove florescent marker from skin sufficiently enough to prevent it from showing up under a black light. However, it can be successfully masked by going back over the offending area with a sharpie marker.
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"Spider sense....tingling."
Posted by gatchamarie on 11-01-2012 at 08:59:
Oh, Buffy! Your son does seem to be a naturally born investigator! Thanks for sharing such a sweet story! Aren't those whispers, giggles, and thumps of the feet just so adorable to listen unnoticed?!
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Posted by clouddancer on 11-01-2012 at 12:29:
Buffy, that is a great story. Good thing you found a way around that black light check. 
I am teaching a group of grade 1's and 2's this year. The grade 2 - 7 year olds kept trying to tell the grade 1's - 6 year olds. That Santa was not real. Had them all upset. But then when I turned around and told them how Santa was not going to bring them presents this year, they would swear up and down that he WAS real. Right on that cusp of believing.
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Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
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