You Hide the Freaking Elf

Spoiler:  If you believe in Santa and the magic of elves, you may want to stop reading.

A few years ago, our family was introduced to a new Christmas tradition - the Elf on a Shelf.  I think we were pretty late to the party, but for those of you who don't know about this elf, he's basically a little poseable elf doll that comes with a book for children that tells the tale of how this elf watches to see who's good and who's bad and reports every night back to the North Pole, before returning to the house.  The idea is that the kids get up every morning to see where the elf is in the house and know that he's watching them.  For most people, the elf looks like this:


And yes, that was the first google image that popped up for "elf on a shelf."

Personally, I think that guy looks super creepy.  Like, one morning you might wake up and he'll have a carving knife and be sitting on your pillow creepy.  Plus, he's expensive.  Like $30 expensive.  But it sounded like a good idea, so my wonderfully practical wife Rachel started looking around and found the much cuter, economical knock-off version, Christopher Pop-in-Kins:

Much better, right?

So this starts off great....December 1st, you stash him on a shelf in the kids room.  Kid wakes up, sees the elf and is ecstatic that Christmas is almost here.  December 2nd, your son vaults out of bed at 6:30 and flips on the light to see Mr. Pop-in-Kins on top of the fridge.  Oh, that cheeky elf.  By the end of the first week, we've exhausted damn near every high vantage point in our house, and it seems like Jonah's getting up earlier and earlier every day, excited to see where Christopher is.  By next week, Rachel and I will be spending a half an hour every night after the kids go to sleep arguing over where to put this guy.  Fortunately, Rachel's love of Pinterest has yielded some great ideas, but I think we can all agree that it's much more fun and satisfying to come up with things on your own.  Of course, this can blow up in your face too.

For instance, we sort of came into a free Christmas tree the other day.  Long story short, there was a miscommunication at Rachel's job and a patient brought her a tree.  So, I have the brilliant idea to not tell the kids, keep the tree in the car and break it out at night after they go to sleep.  Only we don't get the kids to bed until 10:30 that night and who really wants to set up a tree at 10:30 at night?  So we just decided we'd bring it in the next morning.  So then Jonah asks where the tree came from, and I get the bright idea to say that Christopher must've brought it and left it in the garage.  Everything's well and good until I'm on the phone with my mom later that night talking about the free tree we got from one of Rachel's patients and Jonah gets a confused look and says "nuh uh dad, Christopher brought it!"  Busted. 

I now see that Christopher has a sister elf that you can purchase as well, Christina Marie.  Good God, hiding two elves a night?  No thank you.