Greetings, friends! Today marks 9 months until Christmas and all of a sudden it feels like Christmas is much closer. It could be because the North Pole just got about five feet of new snow…or it could be because we have so much going on.

First of all, Toyvember continues. This is one of the longer Toyvember seasons I can ever remember. I was on the phone with Santa yesterday – it was snowing so hard nobody wanted to go out – and he told me that he thinks this Toyvember is going to last a bit longer.

We’ll see.

Some of us are still working though. Right now, it’s about Christmas in July and all the events surrounding the changes over at SantaTrackers.net. Christmas in July is going to be fun for elves all over the world. They just announced the first all-elf Silly Elfie Selfie Contest as part of Christmas in July. I’m really looking forward to that!

This week North Pole Flight Command also announced another Christmas-in-July event, something that has become a tradition – The Tracker Elf Announcement Press Conference.

I don’t know yet how different it will be this year. But I’m hearing things. I’ll keep you posted.

Easter is around the corner. Elf Crash Murphy is on the committee running the annual Easter Egg Roll. That’s always a dicey event at the North Pole because we are still very deep in snow. It’s hard to roll those eggs in fresh powder.

But I’m concerned with Elf Crash leading the charge. He’s quite the prankster and I’m worried about what he might pull.

Elf vacation season is coming up fast too. I know many are making plans. But I’m not yet. I fear there might be a shortage of sleighs because there is certainly a shortage of reindeer.

Most are gone from the North Pole.

But some come back during vacation season just to get some work in hauling elves in sleighs to places far and wide.

Reindeer like that because they treat it a little like a lottery. They draw assignments literally out of a hat which tells them when they are taking off and how many elves they will be hauling. But they do not learn of their destination until their sleigh is actually loaded. The reindeer get really excited by the surprise of where they get to go. It’s a fun way for them to handle it all.

Wherever you are I hope you are enjoying a lovely change of season. It’s winter for us here still but maybe that will change soon.