The Ongoing Adventures of Rosie Peppermint

What's up, Christmas fans.

The arrival of Rosie Peppermint - November of 2017.

So I don't think I mentioned this to you folks before, but we got the girls one of those Elf on the Shelf thingies towards the end of November last year.  Kris and I had debated it for a couple years, back when they first came out and Alayna was, like, three years old, but then said 'that's stupid, let's not do that.'  A few years passed and the girls didn't say anything, and Kris and I were both grateful.

Because Elf on the Shelf IS stupid.

Well, for the last three years or so, since we've been back up here in Michigan, Alayna and Abby both started asking about it.  For the first two years, we were able to brush it off - fortunately the girls were more curious than interested - but last year they really started bugging us about it.  It was really aggravating, because Alayna - at nine years old - was almost to that age where that stuff is no longer going to be believable - but we eventually relented, bit the bullet, and bought a damn Elf.

Rosie's "Birthday Party."

We let the girls unwrap it one evening after school, and they were both super-excited.  They threw their Elf - a female (yes, you can choose its gender) they christened 'Rosie Peppermint' - a birthday party, and later that night after they went to bed, Kris and I started the long, arduous process of putting the Elf in all kinds of compromising situations.

What sucks about this whole damn process is that you have to constantly place the Elf somewhere different, and doing different things, and all the time raising the elaboration of it all.  Kris scopes out Pinterest constantly, because all sorts of lame-ass parents post their stuff to Pinterest, and both of our Facebook feeds are filled with parent friends who upload their own Elf exploits so the entire world can know how f***ing cool they are.

I've had to develop an entirely new handwriting style for Rosie, as it couldn't match the existing handwriting styles I've created for Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy.

I hate people.

Anyway, not to be hypocritical or anything, but here's some of the shit we came up with last year (at least I'm not uploading it to social media.)  We had to run this gauntlet for nearly thirty days last year, and this year - starting today - we're going to repeat the process.  We can't do any of the previous twenty-seven things, so Kris and I are both really looking forward to scraping up new ideas for this stupid, waste of time.

Happy Holidays. . .

(We forgot until the last minute.  These lame-ass poses happened frequently.)

We occasionally had to leave clues like this so our kids knew where the thing was. . .

The running joke around these parts is that our elf has a sweet tooth, which the girls find hilarious.

This was 'warming up by the fire' after her adventure in the freezer.

(This one was my idea.)

Following a day where the girls had been fighting with one another like crazy, we staged an inter-mythical creature capture (note the change in handwriting - appreciate the hell out of that, America.)  The point of the whole Elf on the Shelf thing (so I'm told) is that it 'watches' your kids to make sure they remain on their best behavior for S. Claus.  That's extremely creepy.

Kris came up with the Minions thing.  (I drew the dead Minions.  Just in case you were curious.)

We hung up a bunch of the girls underwear all over the Christmas Tree.  Just 'cause.

On the night before Christmas Eve, for Rosie's second-to-last act of the season, we went big.  Abby had been asking Rosie for a Scavenger Hunt (seriously), which is always a total bitch to set up (have you seen our Easter mornings around here?)

. . . aaaand now we have to jump through all the damn hoops all over again.  The second my kids stop believing in all this Elf crap, I'm going to take Rosie outside in the bonfire pit and set her on fire.

- Brian