You’re Having an Elf-in’ Laugh!

The elves have arrived and already the little bastards are getting on my nerves.  As I said in last week’s post, I need to be vigilant because our eldest is eight and doesn’t miss a trick.  He still wants to believe but one wrong move and the fantasy will come crashing down around our ears.

On Sunday we took the kids to a Christmas ‘experience’ where they made reindeer dust, listened to a story about St. Nicholas and how the tradition of giving gifts began and fed a real reindeer.  (They almost got attacked by some psychotic geese and nibbled by a randy llama too…but the less said about those bits the better).  The elves then arrived on Sunday night so that J could be convinced it was because they had now officially given their lists to Father Christmas.

The first prank was easy to engineer; a friend had made some baubles full of sweets with the children’s initials on.  We thought we couldn’t go wrong with the offer of confectionary for breakfast so we hung these on the tree along with their respective elves.

Yesterday I made a list of other pranks and in my wisdom thought the children would find a bathroom completely decorated in loo roll hilarious.  Did I also find it hilarious? No.  No I did not.  Especially after balancing on the bath, carefully wrapping loo roll around the shower curtain pole, artistically draping it over the radiator and positioning it around the taps…to then realise that I’d forgotten to first have a shower, brush my teeth and go to the loo.

As a result I found myself stepping over long ribbons of loo roll and ducking underneath swathes of Supersoft to get to the sink like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible II, navigating laser beams to avoid triggering an alarm.  Successfully reaching the sink without incident or injury, I leant over the sink at a ridiculously precarious angle to wash my face and brush my teeth to avoid dribbling on and subsequently disintegrating the loo roll.

By ducking and diving I managed to reach the toilet, sat down…and realised I had nothing with which to wipe because it was all draped around the sodding bathroom.  I considered a drip dry because by this point I was knackered but after a quick recce I realised the bit around the cistern would survive if I tore off a couple of sheets.

I finally made it into bed, sweating with the effort…then realised J’s bright idea of leaving the elves something to eat and drink overnight was still in their rooms.  Struggling out of my warm bed, I sneaked into the bedrooms and tore up the leftover pizza, leaving only the crust and an odd bit of tomato or olive for authenticity.  I poured most of the juice down the sink, replaced the cups and then crept downstairs to give the remains of the pizza to the dog…and froze as I heard J cough and have a drink of water.

There was nothing for it.  I had to wait at the bottom of the stairs until he settled, listening for movement and putting the TV on so that if he came down I could dive onto the settee and pretend to be watching it.  After fifteen minutes I decided to risk it and got back into bed…and then lay awake wondering if I’d sufficiently covered my tracks.

I worried that maybe J had seen me and had only pretended to be asleep and then it struck me; I hadn’t checked that Pepper had actually eaten the pizza.  A schoolboy error if ever there was one.  I heaved myself wearily out of bed once more, my husband snoring gently beside me and tiptoed downstairs…to find, unsurprisingly, no trace of pizza and a very contented dog.

To add insult to injury, we were rudely awoken by J at 6am complaining that he couldn’t get to the toilet so hubby begrudgingly helped him to avoid him being garrotted by tightly strung loo roll.  I then lay awake, desperately needing a wee but not wanting to until the other two had witnessed what the cheeky elves had done…and also to revel in the luxury of using more than two sheets.

I have to say they were delighted and couldn’t stop talking about it which of course made it all worth it…pretty much. So, two nights of pranks down, seven more to go.

The magic of Christmas?  You’re having an elf-in’ laugh, aren’t you?