Elf on the Shelf Madness

I look forward to Christmas every year because the children in our daycare work extra hard to behave.  Of course, it’s easy to say that Santa is watching and, from past experience, sometimes I have to reinforce this by calling Santa.  Fortunately, we recently heard about the Elf on the Shelf and it has saved us.  Our elf’s name is Charlie and he sits in the daycare room while we have two other elves that sit on our tree in the entryway (we like to cover all our bases).

My mom, who packs and unpacks all the Christmas decorations, has a tendency to misplace our elf every year and it seems like he comes back from Santa’s workshop every year later and later.  This year, we couldn’t find him at all.  This is after my mom had put him somewhere special so we would know where to find him this year.  It really helped. 

Two weeks into December, we still hadn’t found our elf, Charlie.  We joked around with the kids, who were starting to wonder where he went by saying that he probably got lost on the way here, or he was here somewhere, but, we ultimately decided that something had to be done.  The children were getting Christmasitis, you know, that disease that spreads right after Thanksgiving where the children start misbehaving because of all the vacation they are about to have (not to be confused with New Yearitis when they get back from their vacation).

It was about a half hour before daycare was about to start when I remembered that I needed to do something about our missing elf.  I hastily grabbed an elf (who we had mentioned was retired) and grabbed a leftover Christmas card.  I hid this elf, who we had named Simon when I was really into American Idol, and I wrote how Charlie had a candy cane fiasco and couldn’t make it.

It seemed to work for the most part, except we have a couple taller kids who try to touch the elf, didn’t they read the story?  Now, it’s a mad dash to try to remember to re-hide him in a different spot every day and, even though we always say that the elf is watching, it doesn’t seem to be doing a bit of good.

I think this year I’m going to retire the elf in the daycare.  In my household, I think Husband and I enjoy creating situations for our elf, Nicky more than Miss K enjoys seeing them, but I’ll still continue doing them in our household.  If only to keep my Christmas spirit up.

Do you participate on Elf on the Shelf?  What are your thoughts on it?  Share it in the comments below!