Elf on the Shelf

Josh got an early Christmas present from Aunt Michelle yesterday, an Elf on the Shelf.  I've seen the Elf floating around on Pinterest like crazy and I loved some of the creative ideas so when she told me about it, I was thrilled.  She said that it was a boy elf but that she had a skirt you could put on it to make it a girl one and asked if I wanted it.  I said no because I figured Josh was a boy and he'd probably want a boy elf and besides, an elf is an elf, right?  Anyways, she had Josh watch a video that explained how it all 'worked'.  The gist of it is that the elf watches you and then flies home to Santa every night to report on your behavior.  Then in the morning, the kids have to look around and see if they can find where the elf 'landed' after his trip to the North Pole.  I caught Josh trying to hide a smile a few times during the movie and when it was over he tried to act all cool like it was no big deal.  His curiosity was definitely peaked though because he grabbed my hand and asked me to go downstairs and look at the elf with him.  I did and we spent the next few minutes talking about what to name it.  I asked if he wanted to name it a made up name like Twinkle or Buddy or if he wanted to name it a human name.  He immediately said human so I started spouting off boy names and he shook his head at each of them.  I kept asking him for suggestions and he finally said that he thought maybe it was actually a girl elf and so we needed to give her a girls name.  Ohhh.  So I named 3 girl names to start him off and he immediately picked Sarah, because it was also the name of his Mooshi Monster.  He was pretty pleased with this name and he came over close to me and kind of hugged me and said "I think she likes it because I can kind of see her smiling, can't you?"  
We headed back upstairs and I quietly asked Mike to go play ping pong with Josh for a few minutes.  He did and so I went downstairs and grabbed the skirt that I had previously declined and put it on 'Sarah'.  I then went and hung around with Josh and Mike until we were about ready to go.  Michelle was skyping with Jeremy, and Josh was telling him about the elf so I told him to run downstairs and bring it up so that Jer could see it.  He did and when he opened the box to show him, he was so surprised that it had a skirt on.  He was all smiles as he kept saying over and over again that it didn't have a skirt and then it did have a skirt.  "I definitely believe in it now" he said.
Before we headed home we stopped at Grandma and Grandpa Monsivais' house so that Josh could return the 3DS that he had borrowed from Mars.  While there he wanted to show all the kids his new elf.  He was pretty proud of it.  Joshua decided to tease him and tried to touch the elf, which is absolutely FORBIDDEN!  Josh wouldn't let him, knowing that Sarah would lose her magic if touched, and protected her until Joshua left him alone.  Later, Joshua was giving Josh the mean eye and so Josh opened the book so that Sarah could see Joshua being mean.  He then said that Sarah was going to report that to Santa!  What a smart kid.
On the way home he asked me to make sure to put all this in his blog and he helped me take some pics to post too.

He was not happy with the second picture though because it has a light spot on it from the flash so we had to take it again.

He said this one was much better.  He left the box standing up so that when Sarah needed to get out, all she had to do was walk out.  He's so thoughtful.

This morning he found Sarah in the pantry drinking the Butter Pecan syrup through a straw.  He loved it and was so excited to take a picture.