Rosie the Elf

Well let me just say: Our elf Rosie did a stellar job of being creative this year. You'd think she'd be running out of ideas but she's one smart elf. ;)

Day one: Rosie came in on a zip line. That thing must have taken about 30 minutes to put together... She's so cool. 

 Look: she even used some of our flame-less tea lights to light the runway.  

And apparently she's a Super Elf (which we already knew!)

One morning we found that she'd taken some of the kids' toys and toilet papered them. Naughty elf. 

One day she decided to learn how to play basketball. It looks like she caught on pretty well! 

And of course, what kind of elf would she be if she didn't roast some marshmallows and make s'mores? I'll never figure out how she blackened that marshmallow using a battery operated candle... must be Christmas magic.

Here we found an organized race among several of the kids' toys. 

Look, she even made a checkered flag to wave at the finish line. How clever.  

I didn't realize Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz would be so... competitive. 

Uh oh... Rosie has a gambling problem. We found her and some other toys playing cards. What's in those glasses? A quick taste test revealed it was only fruit punch. Whew... 

Nice bow, Rosie!

Apparently Rosie made good friends with Ali's American Girl dolls. Here she's fixing Allison's hair and it looks like they were also playing a BFF game. 

"If you could change the name of one of your BFFs, what would you change it to?"

LOL

Then one morning we found her coloring in Jordan's coloring book. She really needs to work on her coloring skills. 

 One night, right before we all went to bed, Jordan broke a tire off of his FAVORITE race car. OMG, end of the world. So  his sister says to him, "Don't worry Jordan, Rosie can fix it with her Christmas magic!" So off they run to find Rosie and I hear Jordan asking her to fix his car "priddy pwease?"

Also that night, Ali lost another tooth. She put it in a baggy and hid it under her pillow REALLY WELL, apparently, because when she woke up the next morning her tooth was still there. Oh man, the Tooth Fairy let the ball drop on that one. Or did she?

When we found Rosie that morning, not only had she made herself a cup of syrup and eaten half a peppermint, she'd also used a hot glue gun to fix Jordan's car AND... 

She left a letter for Ali about her tooth. Whew, catastrophe averted. 

One morning Jordan found Rosie in this over-sized plastic bottle. 

Here she decided to break the ROOF OFF our gingerbread house. Brat. It was okay, though, because that meant Jordan and I could finally start breaking pieces off to eat since it was already "ruined". Thanks Rosie!

She must have felt guilty about the gingerbread house because she was hiding in Jordan's stocking the next day. 

The morning before my big Spartan Beast I found this lovely little note on our bed frame. Awe, thanks! 

One day we found her hanging from our pull-up bar. She must be working out.

Thankfully someone pays attention to the plants in this house! The poor ivy hadn't been watered in a long, long time so Rosie did it for me. 

She likes basketball video games too, I guess.

One morning we woke up to find all our shoes tied together. 

Ali woke up one day to Rosie "stealing" money from her money jar. 

Our last morning with Rosie was fun! We'd left her some little miniature cookies and man, she went to town on those things. She spelled out Thank You in M&Ms. 

Messy chocolate face.

She also left a trail of M&Ms from the kids' bedrooms to the living room. We're lucky we didn't get ants that night. 

And here the kids are on our Christmas morning picking up Rosie's M&M trail. Ali was putting them back in a bowl. Jordan was just eating them. 

And there you have it! Rosie the Elf, December 2013. 

I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures every day, so there are only 19 days represented with the pictures. Some other things she did that I forgot to take pictures of:

Made a swing out of a toilet paper roll, covered it in wrapping paper, and hung it above our couch... we caught her swinging on it, too.

Took Ali's CD player and hooked up some ear-buds to it. We found her listening to music that morning.

Found my husband's old iPhone that had been missing for several months and was playing games on it.

Took a ride on a giant rubber ducky in the kids' bathtub.

I'm forgetting a couple, but you get the idea about how brilliant she was this year! I can't wait to see what she does next year! Maybe she should start planning her ideas early...