Hi Everyone! Happy 4 months until Christmas! Can you believe it?

I must apologize for not bringing forth much news lately. There are so many things going on and so much stuff for me to catch up on with you. I actually had to make a list:

Toyvember
Santa’s Sleigh
A new website
Reindeer update
Elf Winslow
Santa tracking
Tracker elves

That’s quite a list, eh? Let’s see if I can get through it all.

Ok, Toyvember ended here the first week of August. Santa is going through all the new toy ideas now. We are not sure how long it will take him to tell us what he thinks. I know the panel of judges who are part of this process are VERY excited about some of the toy entries. As far as I can tell, they continue to meet twice a week. I should have some news for you soon on all this.

Meanwhile, Santa’s new sleigh has been in test flights now for weeks. Of course, I cannot tell you how that is going. I think the flyboys over at North Pole Flight Command are planning on an update this week. Keep your eyes peeled for that. I think there is good news about Santa’s sleigh this year.

And speaking of North Pole Flight Command — they have a MAJOR website update to announce very soon. Yule love it. I’ve seen the work on it and I’m very excited for it. It will add a lot to Santa Tracking this year.

Last month we reported that some special teams of reindeer were recalled by Santa to the North Pole. That report actually caused us to get a lot of mail about all the OTHER reindeer Santa has and when they all will be back. Just to update you, this situation really has not changed. Those special teams of reindeer are still here and they are working on the test flights of the sleigh. According to both Santa and Elf Victor, we do not yet expect the other reindeer back at the North Pole this month or even next month in September. They are fine though. No problems.

The man of mystery here at the North Pole these days is Elf Winslow. As we reported late last month Elf Winslow is engaged in some sort of top secret project. I was just informed that Elf Winslow has been transferred from the News Department to North Pole Security. I’m not sure what that means. I’m also not sure if we will be hearing again from him about anything soon. I do see him from time to time. He carries a clipboard and seems to be very busy. I’m going to miss working with him. Winslow is a good elf.

Efforts to begin coordinating the Santa tracking for this year are going fine. The North Pole sleigh port is one busy, busy place these days. Mostly because of test flights. I can report that the Weather Department has recalled their entire team and I’m told we should be receiving global extreme weather reports on a daily basis now. It is very early for that kind of thing. It did snow here quite a bit the other day, so maybe someone there knows something I don’t.

Meanwhile, Santa wants a whopping 40 million tracker elves this year. I’m hearing we don’t yet have a lot of new trackers, but that is pretty normal for this time of year. I will try to get you an update on that for next month.

Oh, one last thing — and this wasn’t on my list but should have been: the virus. We still have no cases of the virus here at the North Pole. We are still being very careful. We wash hands a lot and every time someone sneezes everyone jumps. We don’t want the virus here!

Ok, kids — that’s about it for this month. You know that the news starts to pick up from about this point forward. There will be more updates, I promise you. From lots of us. More news, more articles, more podcasts, more radio reports — everything.

Oh – another last thing: school. We are getting a lot of mail. It seems many of you have unique situations with school this year. We understand. It’s happening here at the North Pole too. We want to help in any way that we can. This is a reminder to ALL teachers that if you have needs for your classroom this year, big or small, please contact us at our Teacher Page. We can help.

Cheers!