Santa Update Countdown: 10 Months til Christmas Eve!
Merry Greetings, friends!
It has been a very busy month here at the North Pole. This month has been all about remodeling at the North Pole. Santa has been very involved in rebuilding the Sleigh Barn, a place where he likes to spend a lot of time during the off-season. Santa and Elf Quinton have big plans for a new sleigh this year (they do every year) and they are like little kids playing with a toy train on Christmas morning as they build it from the ground up.
But before they build the new sleigh they have to build the new Sleigh Barn. For a guy like Santa, this is a project that is almost as fun as building a new sleigh.
Santa has a team of elves working with him including Elf Bernard, his head elf in the Workshop. Right after Ground Hog’s Day they tore down the old barn and expanded the foundation for a new building. It has been a winter of heavy snow at the North Pole so there are lots of big machines out there to make all this happen. Santa had four snow plows and two backhoes working to prepare the land. But the storms have kept coming in so the plows have had more of the work than anyone. Finally Elf Bernard got impatient with all the delays because of the weather and he had the elves build a big snow fence to the west of the project to keep a lot of the blowing and drifting snow away from the project. That helped.
After about two weeks of clearing dirt and snow Santa and the boys were finally able to start framing the building. It went up quickly.
But Santa has spent a lot of time working on the details of the new Sleigh Barn. The floor in the new sleigh barn is made of a special material that is actually warm. It is a little rubbery to walk on but if water or something wet spills on it the floor does not get slippery. Santa says it is neat stuff and that someday most people will make their floors this way. The new Sleigh Barn will feature a new paint shop, for painting the sleigh; a wind tunnel for testing flight without actually taking the new sleigh outside; and a super secret security system that will keep the new sleigh design a secret better than ever.
That is not all that is new at the North Pole. Mrs. Claus is getting a new oven in her kitchen, the Workshop is getting a new lunch room for the elves, and Santa himself is building an all new basketball gym for the elf basketball tournament scheduled for next month (the nets are set at elf regulation height of five feet and two inches).
If there is any part of the North Pole not really busy right now it would be Elf Hugo’s group at Santa’s North Pole Post Office. There was a rush of mail for Santa right after Christmas and a few Valentine’s that came in for Santa earlier in February. But since then the mail has really slowed down. They try to fill their time by coloring all the new Christmas stamps they will be using this year.
— Elf Ernest
