The arrival of the Scout Elf
Something rather strange happened at home this weekend. As always when post arrives, the children heard the rat-tat-tat of the postbox, and ran to the front door.Miss 10 returned to the lounge breathlessly while myself and my other half stood in the kitchen with furrowed browswondering what on earth was going on. She was carrying aletter, and a brown paper parcel. The postmark wasfrom the North Pole, but the children hadn't noticed.“It's for 'The Beckett Family'and it's hand writtencan we open it?“We nodded.
Miss 10 and Miss 11 stood next to each other at the dining table, reading the letter out loud, and clutching the brown paper parcel that accompanied it.
A sentence in, Miss Ten stopped reading, and stared at us both while the blood drained from her face.“It's from Santa! Oh my god! He's real! He's real!“The letter described the impending arrival of a “Scout Elf”, on special assignment to watch our house in the run-up to Christmas. She would be arriving at some point during the day, and a book accompanied the latter describing the tradition of the Scout Elves, and their nightly reporting back to the North Pole on everything they had seen and heard.
The children sat at the dinner table and read the book, cover to cover. Twice. I don't think I've ever seen them so excited.“Let's get dressed and tidy our room!“I'm not quite sure how myself and my other half held it together.
A little later in the morning I had to go and buy groceries in town, and after wandering back, laden with shopping bags, discovered that our house elf had arrived. She was sitting in a cardboard sledge in the window at the top of the stairs. The window was cracked open, and a trail of glitter lead outside.“Look Dadthat's where she flew in!”“Don't we have to give her a name?”“Yes. She's called 'Grace'. You can't touch her, because then she will lose her magic”.“Ok.“And so began the tradition of “The Elf on the Shelf” in our household. Late last night I listened as Miss 11 went up to bed, stopping at the top of the stairs to say goodnight to Grace. This morning I woke the children for school, and the first words out of their mouth were “Where's Grace?“They discovered her looking out over the living room, wearing a miniature version of their school uniform.