Reginald VanWinkle: Resident Elf {Elf on the Shelf}

 We are all elfed up in this house.

True story: Uriah wanted to name our elf Babe Winkleman and Abby admitted that she would have named him Buddy (as in: Buddy the Elf, what's your favorite color Will Farrell fame?!).  Finn's choice when I asked him?  Thunderbolt.  Of all of them, Finn's name had the most potential, but I have a firm grip on reality and, obviously, control of this house, so we named him Reginald VanWinkle.  I call him RVDub.  The kids call him Reggie.

Reginald VanWinkle arrived Saturday morning on a small Christmas tree with a bag of the cheapest, most delicous powder sugar donuts and a letter from Santa explaining his duties.  I did a quick world wide interweb search for the best Santa letterhead and some ideas for the letter from Santa.  Turns out I didn't have to look very far because one of my friends is doing this with her girls, too, so I borrowed her letter - it was perfect for what I was looking for, a little bit of Christmas magic, a little bit of Jesus; I only had to tweak it a bit (when I added to the original letter it was 2 pages long; who would have thought I could be so wordy?  It needed to be narrowed down a bit and I edited it down to 1 page!).  So in addition to talking about Jesus being the biggest and best gift and reminding the small humans to be kind to each other and helping others, the letter also gave some of the Rules of the Elf.  For example, RVW watches all day long for good and bad behavior and reports directly to Santa every night and  you can't touch the elf or he loses his magic.  Finn kept yelling at me, "I'm not touching him, Mama!  I'm just talking to him!"  The elf moves every night and in the morning the small humans have to find where he is.  Some days he'll be doing mischievous things, like drinking our pancake syrup or hanging socks and undies on the Christmas tree.  Some days he's just in a new observation spot.

Yesterday morning, for example, he showed up in our refrigerator, having turned a glass of milk red and one green for Abby and Finn.  Abby claimed to have looked all over the house in the morning before giving up and going to the refrigerator to get the milk out for some cereal - and finding RVDub in the process.  Finn, of course, was pretty much told where to look, but he laughed when he opened the refrigerator to find Reggie just hanging out and chose to drink the green milk, leaving the red for Abby.  (Sidebar: Cursive handwriting is so hard!)

It's been well established that I like to be organized (and also I like to not have to think about where I'm going to move Reginald VanWinkle each night) so I made up an itinerary of where he's going to be each morning.  At least once a week he has a gift for the small humans, mittens or a new Christmas CD, but mostly he just does fun things.

I am looking forward to Reginald VanWinkle's Christmas season in our house.  I'll try to post some more pictures on the blog as we work through his itinerary, and I'll probably be posting  more of his super fun capers on Instagram (Do you do Instagram?  I love it.  It's my go-to for pictures these days because it's so easy and fun!) or if we're friends on Facebook, you'll probably see some pictures there, too.

Happy Monday, friends!  Finn and I are still stuck in the house again today trying to get rid of his hacking cough so that we can be healthy enough to head south when the new baby comes.  In the process, we are busy making this house merry and bright!