Internet, if I’m being honest, I wish I could put the whole Elf on the Shelf … well, back on the shelf. (I have zero picture of said elf, so cute baby Archer Elf will have to do instead.)  Our elf is a big fat lazy bum. He is such a bum, in fact, that he hasn’t even made an appearance for the past two years.  One friend suggested that he’s at rehab (bless his heart); another friend thinks that I should provide postcards from the elf showing all the places he’s visiting.

But that would require me to find interesting postcards. And I’m too tired to do that.

The cold hard truth is that I lost the elf one year when I stuffed him quickly into one of my handbags after Christmas Day to get him out of sight, out of mind from Jude. Fast forward a few months later when I found that handbag to use and lo and behold, there was TomSam the Elf. Except … then I don’t really remember what I did with him from there. So maybe he’s vacationing at Goodwill? Or drowning in my basket of orphaned socks? Or in the back of my underwear drawer?

Jude asked about our elf the other day and I was like well crap. He still wants the elf?! We haven’t outgrown him?! NOOOOOO.

So I guess it’s off to Barnes & Noble to get another dadgum elf.

Meanwhile, I am WAY on the ball for advent this year. Last year we had a major attitude issue over the advent calendar and it got taken away after only five days. It REALLY sucked to not do it, but I couldn’t let him get away with acting so tacky about it. I think I get more excited about it than he does.

So this year, I made my plan and tracked down the Lego Star Wars advent calendar from Amazon because I knew J would really think that was cool. It arrived expediently and I worked on setting up the display or whatever. Except … there were no instructions. Kinda odd.

And then yesterday morning when he went to open up the first day? It was a bag of Legos, again with no instructions. Very odd for Lego, no? A quick perusal of Google showed that none of the Lego advent calendars come with instructions.

AWESOME. #LEGOfail

Did I tell you that we bought a rental house here in Oklahoma City? Yes! It’s a cute little two bedroom garden home and it was built in the early ’00s.  (Spoiler: it’s not the photo above from BHG).  And I’m pretty sure that the lady who lived there smoked from the moment she woke up until she went to sleep. The nicotine was coating every single surface — everything that should have been white was pee-yellow. It was SO BAD. So we’ve had all the carpet ripped out, every single surface painted and we picked out new flooring that’s being installed ASAP. Which means we will soon be looking for renters, so if you’re in the area and you need a place to rent, we might have your place.

No major plans for the weekend over here other than hunkering down and relaxing. How about you? I plan on wrapping and hiding some presents. (And I wish I was wearing these).