charlie has been an ornery little stinker.

so far, our elf on the shelf has been quite a delight to our mornings. mornings are actually pleasant around here these days....because charlie is watching, ya know.

so the morning after ashlyn left charlie a note, we woke up to find this in the livingroom........

that's charlie hanging from the candle holder on the wall with a black dry erase marker he must have snatched from ashlyn's room. and loooooooook what he did! charlie drew mustaches, beards, glasses, freckles and black teeth all over our pictures! CHARLIE!!!!!

look a little closer. heeee. that pesky elf!

oh gosh, i wish i could have bottled up the giggles coming from the depths of spidergirl's belly. that kid has a contagious joy and having charlie around has multiplied it by 10!

she decided that she needed to leave charlie a picture too! so, she grabbed a red marker and doodled a puppy, of course.

ashlyn decided after one day that charlie needed to be an official member of the family, she she did the honors of letting him know he was welcome to stay around.

and before day two rolled around, spidergirl decided she needed to leave him a note too.

it reads: "I love you Christmas elf all day long. from Emma to Christmas elf my dad calls you stupid."

doug has been telling them there is no way Charlie is 'real'. he likes to get them all fired up and build their excitement. every day their conversations revolve around Charlie and what they think Charlie is going to do next and if they think Charlie has a girlfriend, and.....and.....and........just, Charlie.

so, anywho. spidergirl left her note and off to bed she went, only to wake up the next morning and find Charlie made quite the mess on the kitchen floor---it was a much larger mess than this photo shows. good thing that cereal was outdated. she came to the conclusion that he was hungry and in the middle of getting his breakfast ready when she woke so he had to make himself a statue again. :)

without touching him, she voluntarily swept up his mess in a careful and methodical manor and headed off to school. she was relieved to find him sitting on the table with his cereal in a bowl ready to eat--without more messes.

that evening we decided to pull out the Christmas decorations and start trimming our tree. halfway through, we discovered that we could only hang the ornaments with ribbons already on them because our hooks were missing. so we called it a night without putting the angel on top or the ribbon streamers on (instead of garland).

well, we woke up the next morning to find Charlie helped us out a bit by scaling the tree to put the angel on top.

he's a sneaky little thing, that Charlie.

he's been up to quite a few other things around here.

like Friday morning, we woke up to find Charlie on the couch like this....
you know what that is in his hands don't you? yep.....you guessed it. TOILET PAPER.

the shortcake toilet papered our livingroom by draping it from the ceiling fan, around the Christmas tree, across the couches.....it was a mess!

hahaha. it was awesome! she came down the steps with her jaw to the floor and couldn't believe what she was seeing. :)

if only i had time to record all the little conversations we've had about this little elf while driving last week. especially the elf named Billy that my husband had as a kid. he might just have to make a guest appearance to tell it again. definitely. then the next elf mischief will make much more sense. :)

stay tuned....