A mother in Wylie, Texas, has given many parents a chuckle—and maybe even a good idea—over a mishap with her Elf on the Shelf named Elfis.
Brittany Mease, a single mother of two, had dutifully brought out Elfis on Dec. 1, despite the fact that she “can’t stand doing Elf on the Shelf.”
Mease thought she had found a clever way of avoiding having to move Elfis every night—when Elfis showed up on Dec. 1, he had a note saying he had a broken leg and was required to be on bed rest for 14 days.
“[The note] blamed it on the kids for leaving their toys out, saying he tripped and broke his leg,” she wrote. “Mom win, right? I just got a free pass to not worry about moving that creepy guy for TWO WEEKS! Heck ya!”
But two weeks came and went and her kids, 5 and 9 years old, were getting antsy to find Elfis each morning. After her kids pointed out that Elfis’s bedrest was over, she took him from the counter while they weren’t looking and threw him in the oven, thinking she would find a new spot for him later.
But with her son being sick and life being hectic, she forgot about him—that is until he made a stink.
She was preheating the oven to bake pasta for her sick son Gray, who likes his leftover pasta baked, (“I will literally do anything to get him to eat right now since he’s not had an appetite lately,” she wrote) but about four minutes after she turned on the oven, “I started to smell something REALLY funky,” she wrote. “And that’s when all hell broke loose.”
She rushed to the oven to get him out, and hearing the commotion, Gray came into the kitchen thinking the elf had come back. “His world fell apart as we were using kitchen utensils to get our burnt and melting elf out of the [expletive] oven,” she wrote.
He was “heartbroken,” she said.
Her 5-year-old daughter Ily wasn’t sad though. Mease said she was happy not to have him gathering intelligence on her anymore.
Luckily or unluckily, she had another “Elfis” on hand to replace the burned one, but she still had to call Santa to arrange for the burnt Elfis to get back to the North Pole.
“Ya know, since he is unable to make it to the North Pole to get fixed because his head literally popped off from being too hot once we pulled him out of the oven and his feet are completely melted off,” Mease wrote.
A neighborhood Santa showed up on Tuesday and gave them the “new” Elfis.
But then she had a conundrum.
As she learned from the tens of thousands of comments she got on her post, she wasn’t the only parent who would like to kick the tradition of Elf on the Shelf.
“After I accidentally baked Elfis yesterday, I tore my house apart looking for my backup Elf and found him but now I’m torn,” she wrote in an update to her original post, which was shared more than 120,000 times as of Dec. 20.
“Do I let our Elfis tradition go out in flames or have Santa’s Magic bring him back...? ??♀️??♀️
“I feel like I’ve been secretly waiting for a reason to not EVER have to move that freaking Elf again and maybe this is my chance... what would you do?”
While Mease was pondering what to do, her son Gray came to her rescue.
After all, she is a self-dubbed “elf killer,” according to her Facebook profile, along with a mother and a veteran.
“MOM FREAKING WIN!!!!!!! ????? My kids really think for the safety of the elf that he should return to his assigned seating every day?! Why didn’t I think of that!?!? Once again, idk... but I’m taking it!!!
She said her son is glad to have Elfis back and her daughter is a “little salty” but “alright.”
“I plan on keeping both elves and using them as Christmas organments [sic] in the future when they’re older. I cannot let a funny mishap be forgotten.”
