Welcome, Christopher!

Have you ever heard the story of the Elf on the Shelf? It's a darling children's book that comes with an elf. He's magical - he appears in a different place in your house each day, and then flies back to Santa with his report on your behavior each night. Several kiddos at school have elves, and the boys said they'd like one, too. I ordered one on Amazon, but of course just told the boys that I had mentioned to Santa at the Santa breakfast that we needed one of his helpers at our house. Completely unexpectedly, the elf came this evening in the best imaginable way.

Aidan, Sophie and I were loading up about 7:00 to go get Andrew from TKD. Of course, it was dark. There was a minivan parked in front of our house. I couldn't see any identification because it was dark. Aidan asked if I knew who it was, and I said no. He said, "maybe they're sneaking on our house". Since the exact same thing had already occurred to me, we jumped in the van and locked the doors. As I was debating to drive away or wait and fight off intruders, a man in a delivery uniform got out of the other van and came up to me with a box. I took it, jumped back in, and drove off. Good thing I was expecting a package - if not, I probably would have hit the guy. Packages usually only come by UPS around here. Aidan asked who it was for, and I told him I didn't know. We picked up Andrew and told him our unusual delivery story. Both boys started screaming "it's an elf!!!". Andrew is convinced the random delivery guy is one of Santa's helpers. Maybe. At any rate, my heart-stopping event at least made the elf story more plausible. Of course, they couldn't wait for Tony to get home - we had to carry it gingerly in the house and open it immediately so he could breathe.
The story is so cool because it has very specific rules - Santa has told the elf he's not allowed to talk to children. Also, if you touch him, he loses his power and can't fly back to Santa. We also get to choose his name, and the boys chose Christopher. I very carefully put him in the tree until he flies off for the night. Andrew reminded me to go to bed so Christopher could leave (as though I stay up all night???)