Oh NO! I Killed Buddy the Elf!

My youngest daughter and her husband asked me to watch their kids last weekend. They did NOT inform me of the Elf on the Shelf rules. So when I opened the refrigerator door and Buddy’s legs were in the way when I started to close the door, I moved his legs.

From behind me I heard the scream of my 7-year-old granddaughter. “NOOOO! You’re not supposed to touch Buddy!” 

Frightened, I backed away from the refrigerator as I went into all-out defense mode. “I wasn’t touching him.”

“YES YOU WERE! I SAW YOU!”

“No, I was just moving his leg so I wouldn’t smash it in the refrigerator door. Do you want to see him with a cast on his leg? I wasn’t hurting him. I was saving him.”

That seemed to work. She calmed down.

Until yesterday – when she woke up – and found him still on the refrigerator.  In my defense I was already home, so I take no responsibility for why he was still on the refrigerator.

“Grandma killed Buddy!” she sobbed to her parents when she discovered he hadn’t moved. Nothing her parents said appeased her and she spent the whole day thinking I had killed her beloved Buddy. 

I knew nothing about any of the happenings yesterday, but I got a call today informing me of the rules about Buddy. Rule one – you can NOT touch him; otherwise he might die. Rule two (I found this one by looking online) – Buddy does not speak or move while you are awake. 

Fortunately I have been forgiven, because as of this morning Buddy was alive and well. He had moved!

Lesson learned!

The Hat and the iPad

Avery sitting with most of the Christmas presents I made.

A couple of days before one of my family Christmas get-togethers, I grabbed any available box I could find so I could wrap my handmade crocheted items and jewelry gifts. I was running out of options, though, so I grabbed my old iPad box for Avery’s gift, forgetting about the story I’d heard only days before:

10-year-old Audrey, Avery’s sister, had a broken iPad and she asked Buddy, the family’s Elf-on-the-Shelf, if he could fix it. Miraculously the next morning, the iPad was fixed!

4-year-old Avery, upon learning about how Buddy had fixed her sister’s iPad wondered out loud, “How come Buddy didn’t fix my iPad?” Mom and Dad exchanged glances. Avery’s iPad was graveyard material – waaaaaaay beyond the repair stage. 

Soooo, when Avery opened her gift from me, she exuberantly exclaimed, “I got an iPad?!” She was practically dancing in her seat.

She ripped open her present and found – a hat, a hand-crocheted hat. Biggest letdown ever, but trooper that she is, she didn’t complain. From other family members, however, I heard, “Way to go, Grandma, break a little girl’s heart!”

Oh, yeah, uh oh, I forgot.

Oops!

That event occurred on December 19th. A couple of days later, a little girl approached Avery’s dad when he was working a couple of towns away, and asked him if he wanted to purchase a raffle ticket for – some organization – I can’t remember what (there goes that memory again). He did, and then he forgot about it. (I’m not the only one who forgets.)

A couple of days later somebody knocked on the door to my grandkids’ home and when my son-in-law opened it, he found a stranger standing on his front step, holding a package for him. 

“You won the raffle!” 

So on Christmas morning, when Avery opened her presents and found another iPad box (I laugh just thinking about it), I wonder what went through her head. Would she ever again be able to trust that what she was about to open was a fair representation of what was depicted on the outside of the box, or was this another form of deception? I wonder if she asked herself, “Am I getting another hat?”

Afterword: When I met with a few more grandchildren a couple of days later, I made sure to write a message on the outside of their boxes: “Don’t be deceived by the packaging.” Good thing, because not knowing that one of my grandsons had broken his phone, I had folded his scarf inside an old Walmart phone box.