Christmas Crisis Averted!

[JessB320]

At our house, Santa always wraps presents in paper with pictures of Santa on it. And then he leaves the remainder of the roll leaning against the fireplace under my (mom's) stocking, so we can use up the rest of the roll the following year.

Our Christmas Crisis didn't involve gifts, but the Elf On A Shelf. (I will start by saying I hate the Elf on a Shelf and never wanted to do it in the first place. Lots of kids at school have them and my DD "wished and wished and wished" for one, so he finally came last year.)

And this year... he got melted.

DH "hid" him on the lampshade for the lamp on the end table in the family room. That lamp rarely gets turned on and I even commented that we'd have to make sure not to use the lamp till the elf moved. DH sat down last night to read a book and turned on the lamp. We both wondered "what's that burning smell?"

I don't think DD saw the damage (his whole butt got melted!) but she did see me touch the elf, which is a big no-no in elf lore. I grabbed him off the light before he burst into flames! She went to bed in tears that her elf had lost his magic.

I stayed up late last night trying to repair the silly elf-- and it's not the "official" Elf on a Shelf that you can buy anywhere. THis is the first time I've questioned my decision to buy a cuter elf. And, of course, it happened on a Sunday night when many places close early!

I think I did a good job (he has new clothes now which covers the big hole in his backside! I made them out of felt from my scrap basket). And came back this morning with a note that said he got to keep his magic since touching was "an emergency" and he promised to pick safer places to sit from now on. DD was very happy.

I still hate the elf. My DD is starting to question Santa Claus, but she seems 100% convinced that this elf (which is very obviously a stuffed animal) is real. I don't get it.

Your story made me laugh so hard!!! I too hate the darn elf on the shelf. I wake up at 3 am almost everyday thinking, "did I remember to move the elf?!?!" it's killing me!! Thanks for the info and we will be keeping our elf (who is a one of a kind as well....hmmm I may not have thought that through) well away from heat sources!!!!

 

[ENSOCK]

I purchased my oldest DS a baseball helmet one year. The in thing was to have it airbrushed with their name. I found it in the hiding place a week after Christmas! OOPS!

 

[Jedana]

Too many to count.

The year we moved to Jax---arrived Dec. 19th! I did all my shopping and wrapping in Vegas, because I knew I wasn't going to have time after the move. I knew I was missing something...it just didn't seem like enough under the tree... I found a box of wrapped presents when I was unpacking a month later.




When DD#2 was about 7 or 8, the Barbie airplane came out. I had already done all my shopping---I had a Barbie dream house for her, along with the required Barbies and clothing. DD#2 puts one thing on her list...the airplane. We lived in a small town in Northern Nevada at the time--yes, there was a Walmart and a Kmart, but the Dairy Queen closed in the winter and you had to stand in two different lines (outside, as there was no inside) if you ordered fries and a coke.

Wouldn't you know that the Walmart and Kmart were all sold out....and apparently every other Walmart and Kmart and Target from Colorado west were as well. We had people we didn't know all over looking for this thing...a friend of a friend of a coworker of DH's found one...in PA or WV or someplace way east. Cost me shipping plus a very nice gift card (and the Barbie dream house went back to pay for all of it) but she got the darn airplane. Her daddy made sure of it, but SC got the credit!



Christmas isn't the only time this happens. DS's birthday is in October. I purchased some Spiderman action figures one year, and put them in a bag in the closet. And forgot they were there, until I cleaned out the closet a year later. Luckily he was still in Spidey, so they became his birthday presents that year!



As far as the wrapping paper, yes, I do have separate ones for SC and for us. Different tags too, and we have friends write the tags. Learned that with DD#1.

 

[aprilgail2]

When my oldest DD (now 26) was 3yo all she wanted from Santa was Baby All-gone. We bought it in plenty of time before they were all sold out and wrapped it. I hid it in the back of my closet.

Christmas morning we opened our gifts and put together some of DD's toys. She seemed a little sad and I asked her what was wrong. She said that Santa forgot to bring her Baby All-gone. My stomach sunk. Santa forgot to get it out of our closet. I had DH distract her and take her to the family room. I hid the gift way in the back of tree and DH told her that we would look again to see if it was there. Her eyes lit up when she found the wrapped box. k


)

I have done that two times! One time the packages were under the bed in the downstairs spare room so I jst pulled them out and let them on the floor in there and apparently when Santa came in through that window they must have dropped out of his bag! Another year I left 5 of her presents upstairs in one of the spare bedrooms - so that year Santa came in through the upstairs window and being as rushed as Santa is he must have dropped them and forgot to pick them up to put them under the tree!

 

[DorkyDisneyMom]

At our house, Santa always wraps presents in paper with pictures of Santa on it. And then he leaves the remainder of the roll leaning against the fireplace under my (mom's) stocking, so we can use up the rest of the roll the following year.

Our Christmas Crisis didn't involve gifts, but the Elf On A Shelf. (I will start by saying I hate the Elf on a Shelf and never wanted to do it in the first place. Lots of kids at school have them and my DD "wished and wished and wished" for one, so he finally came last year.)

And this year... he got melted.

DH "hid" him on the lampshade for the lamp on the end table in the family room. That lamp rarely gets turned on and I even commented that we'd have to make sure not to use the lamp till the elf moved. DH sat down last night to read a book and turned on the lamp. We both wondered "what's that burning smell?"

I don't think DD saw the damage (his whole butt got melted!) but she did see me touch the elf, which is a big no-no in elf lore. I grabbed him off the light before he burst into flames! She went to bed in tears that her elf had lost his magic.

I stayed up late last night trying to repair the silly elf-- and it's not the "official" Elf on a Shelf that you can buy anywhere. THis is the first time I've questioned my decision to buy a cuter elf. And, of course, it happened on a Sunday night when many places close early!

I think I did a good job (he has new clothes now which covers the big hole in his backside! I made them out of felt from my scrap basket). And came back this morning with a note that said he got to keep his magic since touching was "an emergency" and he promised to pick safer places to sit from now on. DD was very happy.

I still hate the elf. My DD is starting to question Santa Claus, but she seems 100% convinced that this elf (which is very obviously a stuffed animal) is real. I don't get it.

This one had me laughing so hard this morning. Thanks for that. We have an elf at work. I call him the tattletale, not in front of the kids, but I can't stand that thing.

Last year my youngest found his presents by snooping in my closet. It was only a few of them so when Christmas morning came he wasn't surprised. Also his other gifts were really strange like a giant Costco size jar of pickles and Cars graham crackers. He hasn't snooped this year.

 

[Boston Tea Party]

Santa doesn't wrap.

 

[NHdisneylover]

I love the poor elf story I read it to my teens and they laughed even harder than I did. Thanks for sharing.

Oh, and Santa has never wrapped gifts at my house (when was a kid or for my kids)--he leaves things all set up and put together under the tree

My boys are older teenagers so we obviously don't have to worry about the Santa thing. But I get a little crazy about making sure things are equal for them. I always do a little chart where I write out what each got and the corresponding thing the other got.

I did that list Saturday and...well... at this moment I don't know where it is. I do know it's in my home somewhere.

possibly in posession of one of the boys?


My kids both have birthdays Christmas week--so the need to be hyper organized s very much in me. This year I am annoyed as all get out that shirts I ordered from an EU website on December 1 apparently only shipped FROM THE US today These were the man things DD wanted and the bulk of her gifts for both holidays. I have a sinking feeling they will not get here n time and her brother will have all his things and she will not. The good thing is she is turning 16 so she can be understanding---I guess 'll have to print photos and wrap those up.

 

[Piper]

Some of the PP were talking about children believing improbable things.

I taught PK for many years. Every year, I used 5 different versions of the Gingerbread Man story to teach the concept of character. Some of the characters remain the same--some change. On Friday of that week, our class would make a pan sized Gingerbread Man. All the children added a little of the ingredients. Then we would put him in the oven that was in in a separate room in our PK area. We then read the final story, charted the characters, talked about the different stories and then made a plan for getting our man out of the oven. When we would go to get him, the oven door was open, the pan was empty. We would usually find crumbs or a raisin button to show us which way he went. We would search the school and everyone would play along when the kids asked if they had seen the man. Of course, we always found him (usually hiding in the main office.)


One year at meet the teacher night before school started, a teen aged boy came up to me and asked if I remembered him. I did. He then said, "Do you remember the Gingerbread Man we made?" I did. He then asked, "Did it really run away?" I reminded him that I was with the class the entire time and saw and experienced just what he did. I then asked him what he thought. His reply was wonderful. "My head knows that he was just a cookie, but my heart knows he ran away!"

 

[aprilgail2]

Santa doesn't wrap.

I think that would be so sad to walk into the living room Christmas morning and just see a bunch of things sitting under the tree unwrapped....we even wrap every single thing in the stockings-its so much fun unwrapping each item!

 

[NHdisneylover]

I think that would be so sad to walk into the living room Christmas morning and just see a bunch of things sitting under the tree unwrapped....we even wrap every single thing in the stockings-its so much fun unwrapping each item!

Everyone is different. I always loved having it all set up and ready to start playing with. For ME it would have been sad to have to wait around while things came out of boxes and got assembled--but I totally get if you were raised enjoying unwrapping Santa gits then that is what you would want and it would not be sad for you to do so. My parents (and now my DH and I) always made it look like a store window display.

 

[A_Princess'_Daddy]

Some of the PP were talking about children believing improbable things.

I taught PK for many years. Every year, I used 5 different versions of the Gingerbread Man story to teach the concept of character. Some of the characters remain the same--some change. On Friday of that week, our class would make a pan sized Gingerbread Man. All the children added a little of the ingredients. Then we would put him in the oven that was in in a separate room in our PK area. We then read the final story, charted the characters, talked about the different stories and then made a plan for getting our man out of the oven. When we would go to get him, the oven door was open, the pan was empty. We would usually find crumbs or a raisin button to show us which way he went. We would search the school and everyone would play along when the kids asked if they had seen the man. Of course, we always found him (usually hiding in the main office.)

One year at meet the teacher night before school started, a teen aged boy came up to me and asked if I remembered him. I did. He then said, "Do you remember the Gingerbread Man we made?" I did. He then asked, "Did it really run away?" I reminded him that I was with the class the entire time and saw and experienced just what he did. I then asked him what he thought. His reply was wonderful. "My head knows that he was just a cookie, but my heart knows he ran away!"

I love this story. On the same vein, I have a story that is mildly embarrassing for me but true. In kindergarten we sang a song about the little chickadee who would put on his black cap every morning and would doff it to greet others in the woods. While I knew that chickadees do not wear caps, until I was an adult I somehow thought they could reverse their feathers to have white or black caps. Two terminal degrees from an Ivy League school and I still believed a song I learned at 5 years old about a chickadee doffing his cap!

It was the only time I've ever seen my wife at a complete loss for words, when I was asking an understandably befuddled zoo keeper how the bird actually DID reverse his feathers, since at 28 I was beginning to have my doubts...

 

[Piglets Mommy]

Some of the PP were talking about children believing improbable things.

I taught PK for many years. Every year, I used 5 different versions of the Gingerbread Man story to teach the concept of character. Some of the characters remain the same--some change. On Friday of that week, our class would make a pan sized Gingerbread Man. All the children added a little of the ingredients. Then we would put him in the oven that was in in a separate room in our PK area. We then read the final story, charted the characters, talked about the different stories and then made a plan for getting our man out of the oven. When we would go to get him, the oven door was open, the pan was empty. We would usually find crumbs or a raisin button to show us which way he went. We would search the school and everyone would play along when the kids asked if they had seen the man. Of course, we always found him (usually hiding in the main office.)


One year at meet the teacher night before school started, a teen aged boy came up to me and asked if I remembered him. I did. He then said, "Do you remember the Gingerbread Man we made?" I did. He then asked, "Did it really run away?" I reminded him that I was with the class the entire time and saw and experienced just what he did. I then asked him what he thought. His reply was wonderful. "My head knows that he was just a cookie, but my heart knows he ran away!"

That is so sweet! I'm sure it is nice to know they enjoyed and remember all the great things you did for them!

 

[maddiel]

We leave our wrapping paper out every year when we go to bed on Christmas Eve and every year Santa borrows some of it.

My kids know Santa is real because Mommy is cheap and Santa isn't

M.

 

[h518may]

Everyone is different. I always loved having it all set up and ready to start playing with. For ME it would have been sad to have to wait around while things came out of boxes and got assembled--but I totally get if you were raised enjoying unwrapping Santa gits then that is what you would want and it would not be sad for you to do so. My parents (and now my DH and I) always made it look like a store window display.

I agree. Growing up my parents allowed no presents opened until after breakfast Christmas morning. Since Santa didn't wrap gifts we had plenty to play with.

Now with my kids daddy works 7-3 Christmas, so we will get up early to see what Santa brought. They can play with those until daddy gets off at three, then we will open presents after he gets home.

As for the OP, my mom always losses a gift. This year she started early, because DD's birthday was last month and mom can't find a doll she bought. One-year in January she found a gift for me. The funny was that she had bought it two years before for Christmas. This year in our house we left out two Lego sets DS asked for, they were Santa gifts, siting in a chair when he can home from school. Had to find something different from Santa, but he is very happy with us since these were exactly what he wanted for Christmas.

 

[JessB320]

Well I have a current mini crisis. I lost a shirt for DS. I can't find it anywhere!! I'm really hoping I find it today worst case I'll get something similar and give it to him on his bday in April lol. I hate when I hide things TOO well!

 

[lovesmurfs]

Well I have a current mini crisis. I lost a shirt for DS. I can't find it anywhere!! I'm really hoping I find it today worst case I'll get something similar and give it to him on his bday in April lol. I hate when I hide things TOO well!

I'm now missing a Psych pajama set I ordered back in November for DD -- I'm hoping it's in the bottom of a shopping bag (still wrapping).

If not, she'll get the Nerf gun I was supposed to give her last year (DOH!) and give her the PJs ... whenever.

 

[indimom]

We had a minor nail-biting moment this year. My kids are only getting one big gift plus stocking stuffers, so the big item is a big deal. DD is getting a Cannon Powershot. A pretty pricey gift, so we found one used on ebay. Well, delivery day came and no package. I checked the tracking and it reported that the box was delivered. Still no package. Checked with the neighbors, nothing. Got in touch with UPS and they respond "it was delivered, check with the sender." How is it the senders problem if it was delivered?? Two days go by. No package, no word from UPS. I was freaking out. Did it get stolen off the porch? Did it get mis-delivered??
Two days later, a young woman calls. She found a box on her front porch (I guess she doesn't typically use that door??) with our phone number on it. I've never been so happy for a good, honest, decent human being!!!
Christmas is SAVED! Woo Hoo!

 

[Ilivetogo]

We had a minor nail-biting moment this year. My kids are only getting one big gift plus stocking stuffers, so the big item is a big deal. DD is getting a Cannon Powershot. A pretty pricey gift, so we found one used on ebay. Well, delivery day came and no package. I checked the tracking and it reported that the box was delivered. Still no package. Checked with the neighbors, nothing. Got in touch with UPS and they respond "it was delivered, check with the sender." How is it the senders problem if it was delivered?? Two days go by. No package, no word from UPS. I was freaking out. Did it get stolen off the porch? Did it get mis-delivered??
Two days later, a young woman calls. She found a box on her front porch (I guess she doesn't typically use that door??) with our phone number on it. I've never been so happy for a good, honest, decent human being!!!
Christmas is SAVED! Woo Hoo!

UGH. I have this type of problem. I live in a town that starts with "H" and the neighboring town also starts with "H". MY address is also the EXACT SAME as in the other town!!! If I'm missing something that the tracking says was delivered, I calland tell them there's the same address about 2 miles away .... . I get my stuff then.

.

 

[shortbun]

Santa doesn't wrap at our house. Mom and Dad do wrap. My last online gift just arrived. I'm almost done. Just have to get a ping pong conversion top for my pool table.

 

[Mokat76]

My neighbor has three little (believers) grandkids. She also has a key to my house. Last week her DD had a minor emergency so the kiddos had to come to grandma's house. Only thing is grandma had their gifts spread throughout the house and absolutely no way to hide them.

Fast forward to 5:30 p.m. I came home to a very befuddled boxer, four freaked out cats and a living room that looked like a Toys R Us exploded. A few minutes later the phone rang. Since she still had the little ones, all she said is "I'll be over later."

Yes, it's that kind of neighborhood, she's that kind of neighbor, the dog loves her and not a day has gone by since that I haven't giggled about my "BEST CHRISTMAS EVER" (assuming I'm a 7 YO girl, 4 YO boy or baby).