Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Shan house, pesky elves were on the march!!! :-)

As in many houses across the world, we started playing host to an elf on the shelf several years ago, when our son Dante joined the family -- a mischievous elf in red, who goes by the name of Saucy Minx!!! Saucy was joined a couple of years ago when our daughter Gaia hit the scene, by a fellow elf in purple, called Mishka. The pair breeze in near the start of every December, enjoy the run of the house for a few weeks, then head off back to the North Pole to tell Santa if the kids deserve to be on the Good List.

As you can see from these photos, life in the Shan household can sometimes be a bit of a challenge -- one night we heard lots of snapping and sounds of a fierce battle, and in the morning we walked in on the elves locked in a fight-to-the-death with an alligator!

A big storm hit Ireland during their stay, and the elves had to wrap up warmly that night and shelter beneath an umbrella.

They did make time for fun and games most of the time, and spent one night gaming on Dante's Nintendo Switch.

And near the end of their stay they comandeered Spideyphant (a statue of an elephant, painted to resemble Spider-Man) who normally resides under our staircase, and went on a parade around our hallway on it.

They'll be taking off during the night -- they climbed the stairs to the roof today -- and we'll miss them while they're gone, but hopefully they'll be handing in a glowing report to Santa!!

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Speaking of Twas The Night Before Christmas... I wrote an updated version of the poem a few years ago, and upload it to my site for several days every years around Christmas time. You can check it out in the EXTRAS part of my site, along with my infamous SHANTA CLAUS story, plus some Shanishly tweaked Christmas Carols, by clicking here: https://darrenshan.com/extras

Have a great Christmas Eve, everybody. I hope you wake to magic and wonder in the morning. x x x