The Adventures of Kelf

So you may know about our Elf on the Shelf, Kelf.  He came to visit us for the first time last year.  He shows up the day after Thanksgiving and watches our every move to report back to Santa each night.  When he returns each day, he is always in a different spot, which after about four days starts to get tricky.  So I turned to my BFF, Pintrest, to see what others were doing.  What I found were a bunch of mischievous elves.  I was a little worried since he is supposed to be watching their behavior, I kind of felt like he should be a good model, but I decided to test the waters a little by having him eat some of the little bit of Halloween candy that was left over.  The kids woke in the morning to see him sitting on an end table, surrounded by candy wrappers.  This is how it all went down:

THEM:  "Mom!  Look!  Kelf ate our candy!!!!"

ME:  "Oh no!  What a naughty elf!"

ABBY:  "He is NOT naughty!"

ME:  "Well he ate all that candy without asking..."

ABBY:  "Yeah, but that's not naughty because he ate all the choking hazards!"

I looked down and sure enough, he was covered in the remnants of Jolly Ranchers.  Okaaaaaay.  Time for a new plan because my children had made it clear that "Naughty Elf" was not going to fly.  So Kelf turned in to quite the adventurer.

One morning, we found him zip lining across the kitchen...

 Another day, he was sitting in the fridge with his pencil and the kids found notes from him in their lunch boxes...

 Once, he snuggled up under the Christmas tree, wearing Ben's new shoes...

 My favorite was the day that he put on his scarf (thanks to all the leftover felt I had from Abby's Christmas present) and played in the snow...

 At one point he ended up on the ceiling fan, 19 feet in the air...

 And decided to climb the tree sculpture above our front door...

 One of his last stops was Abby's room (you can barely see her the top of her head sticking out from under the blanket) which was all she had been asking him to do all year.  I heard her say, "Oh yeah!" when she woke up and then let him know when she was leaving the room ("I'll be right back, I have to go potty.")  And when she returned ("I'm baaaaaaack!")...

Of course, Kelf had other adventures, like visiting the pantry and Ben's room and once we even found him in my car!!  We were sad to see him go, but we look forward to next November when he returns and I, for one, am thankful to have eleven months to figure out just where he will land!