Dear Elf

Last year we introduced an Elf to our holiday tradition. We've been building the story around him slowly. Something along the lines of he was sent by Santa to keep an eye out and send reports back about what the kids want for Christmas and how they've been behaving. The Elf pretends to be a doll during the day but can really move around. The kids aren't allowed to touch the Elf because that takes away his magic. The kids had a blast hunting to see where the Elf would be watching them from (hanging from the chandelier, tucked inside the Christmas tree, sleeping on a bench above the fireplace, etc.). Sometimes he would leave them notes or eat snacks they'd left out. This year, we decided to introduce him later in the month to take some of the pressure off of us to keep thinking up things for the Elf to do! But they've been wondering when he was going to show up. We finally visited Santa over the weekend. After seeing a few other imposters around town, Clara was sure this was the real one. So it seemed like a good time to bring out the Elf. But...we couldn't find him! A couple days went by, finally Clara decided she better make a plea. So she wrote a note:

Der Elf
We hav ben watin fur you
fum the wests

and tacked it by the fireplace. I kicked up my searching last night and decided to bring out last year's Elf plus a new sidekick for him. The kids couldn't quite understand why there were two elves this morning. The Elves had written a big note to them. But I need to work more on the Elf in Training story I think.