The elf was waiting for us on the window ledge when we got home from picking Grace up at school yesterday. Grace was so excited! We opened the first book right away, the Elf on the Shelf book, and read it several times yesterday. Grace was calling the elf Sparkles all day and insisted that was her name. I kept reminding her that we named the elf Fancy last year (after suggesting at least 50 names before Grace agreed to that one) and eventually found out that one of Grace's friends at school has an elf named Sparkles at her house. Grace was adamant about changing the elf's name, and Brian admitted that he wasn't a fan of the name Fancy either! I ended up telling Grace that if she really wants to change the elf's name we can, but she needs to think of a new name herself and we can't use the name of her friend's elf. She was still talking about changing the name this morning and we threw around some different names on the way to school. We'll see if she actually decides to change it in the next couple days!
I don't really care what the elf's name is, the girls like her and love to look for her in the morning. Grace likes to remind Anna that the elf is watching, and did so while Anna was throwing a tantrum last night when she didn't want to come upstairs for supper. I had to try not to laugh, Anna couldn't have cared less about the elf at the time.
Maybe we'll start a tradition that each year Santa sends a different elf, so we have to name him or her each time... that could be fun!
