Saying Good-Bye to Richie

 I can't believe today is Christmas Eve!  We have had such a wonderful time with our Elf, Richie!  On Christmas Eve Day Richie gets an extra dose of Magic so we can hold him before he leaves.  We look forward to this day.  Richie was in Sally's arms all day long.  As we said good night to Richie tonight, we all had tears in our eyes as it will be an entire year until we see him again.  He is Magical and our house is filled with Magic every day he is here.

Elf Breakfast

Yummy Elf Breakfast with Richie!!

Elf TP

This morning my son woke up to find his entire room toilet papered by Richie!  By the time I got the camera, Ryan had taken it down - it was a pretty good TP job!  We discovered that once Richie was in the TP cardboard tube, we could carry him around without touching him! 

Our Elf brought SNOW!

It took us a long time to find Richie this morning!  We found him in the freezer with a little dish of snow and snowballs!  Where ever did he find snow in Southern California?  He must have brought it from the North Pole!


My kids were extremely excited - Sally has only seen snow once in her life.  The snow was a little bit icy so we did our best making a snowman….those of you with lots of snow in your front yard - don't make fun of us :)

Elf Toothpaste Message

An important reminder from Richie: Be Good!  Especially since Christmas is only days away!

Expo Elf

It looks like Richie got in to the dry erase markers!  Last year he drew funny faces on the pictures, this year he wrote nice words around each of the children's school pictures.  That was so sweet of him!

Woodworking Elf

It looks like Richie the Elf got into the garage and got into the tools!  He made 3 little wood bird houses for the children!  I like how he has his safety glasses on!!

Elf Potato Sack Race

This morning we found Richie in the kitchen.  It looks like he rounded up some friends and had a potato sack race last night!

Richie & the Elves

My children keep writing Richie letters asking him to bring his friends over or to bring the off-duty elves over.  I am not quite sure what they think will happen.  Richie wrote them a letter saying elves can only go to the home they are assigned and that he managed to find some toy elves the children could play with.  We found them strung across the dining room! 

The elves are pretty cute and the children were so excited to get an elf they could play with!

One Direction & Richie the Elf

This morning we found Richie hanging out with Harry and Louis from One Direction.  I guess they had a camp out last night and we found them making S'mores!

The marshmallows are actually toasted!

At 6:30 this morning I found Sally down stairs playing with the 1D dolls (of course never touching Richie for fear he will loose his magic).  She thought this was the greatest!!

Richie & the Pickles

It's always so exciting waking up in the morning!  Sally is up every mooring by 6:30 looking for Richie!  This morning we found pickles taped everywhere and Richie with this note:

We have a pickle ornament on our Christmas tree and the children play "find the pickle" every day.  It's their favorite!   I guess Richie loves it too as there were paper pickles all over the house!

Hiding in the Christmas Tree were 3 small pickle ornaments with the children's names on them.  Super Cute!  No one really knows if the pickle ornament is really a "German Tradition" or not, but in our family it is the highlight of decorating the Christmas Tree and a fun version of Hide and Seek!