Eli and Ava have fairies that visit them at night and leave goodies, notes, tricks around the house, etc. This all started with 2 wooden fairy doors I bought on a whim at JoAnn’s a couple years ago and Ava found in my craft room during a quarantine clean out in the spring. She and Eli painted the doors, set them on their desks, and waited to see if the doors would turn magic to let the fairies in our house that lived in the fairy houses outside in our garden. Well guess what?!? The fairies glittered the doors to show they had magic and from then on, Eli’s fairy “Pop” and Ava’s fairy “Cupcake” have been visiting us. This happened about a week into quarantine, and knowing their attention span for the Christmas Elf on the Shelf was about 2 weeks maybe 3, I figured the fairies would be a fun little distraction that would hopefully get us through the 3 week lockdown…..well, as the lockdown continued on, so did the fairies, and now here we are 7 months later and the obsession with fairies has not let up. I definitely didn’t see this coming! Ha!

So, what do Pop and Cupcake do at night when they visit?? They leave glitter beans for Eli and Ava to plant outside and sprout lollipops and cupcakes, they once built a popsicle stick bridge to connect the kids desks, sometimes they just leave a little drawing and note asking a question that Eli and Ava have to write back and answer, and one time they left a little pile of glitter on the kids bedroom floor at night because the fairies wanted to check and see if they were sleeping. I thought the fairy obsession was going to wane about a month into it when the kids kind of lost interest in writing notes, but one night while I was laying in bed with Ava, she asked to look on my phone at Eli’s bedroom camera that was still set up from when he was little to see if he was asleep yet. Well, when I connected into his camera, the fan in his room blew little pieces of dust around his camera that in night-vision mode, looked like something bright zipping back and forth across the lens. Ava jumped up screaming that Pop and Cupcake were in Eli’s room flying around! The fairy fever revved up even more after that night when the kids “saw” the fairies were real.

Throughout the summer, Eli wrote notes to his fairy to leave glitter beans for his friends to plant and grow lollipops in their gardens, the fairy doors went to Michigan with us so Pop and Cupcake would have a way to visit us on vacation, and overall, it’s been a super fun little project these past months. I’m continually amazed that Eli buys into it, although yesterday he told me that he thinks I am the one who writes the notes….didn’t ask me out right about it, but just mused that he wondered if it was me. Although in that same breath, he said “nah, I don’t think humans can grow lollipops, so it must be real fairies,” and I just let him talk it through himself. Phew!

It was a gorgeous fall weekend – cool temps and blue skies – so I planned a little fairy surprise. Pop and Cupcake left the kids a note inviting them to visit the “Secret Fairy Village.” Infirmary Mound park in Granville has a neat hike in the woods with the pages from a fairy story book laminated and scattered throughout the woods. When the story ends, there is a large section of forest with little fairy houses hidden among the trees. Some are made of sticks and very rustic little houses, while others were painted and had a theme to them. Eli and Ava were going nuts carefully exploring each house and talking amongst themselves as to whether or not Pop and Cupcake knew who lived there.

Now the dilemma I have is whether or not Pop and Cupcake will fly south for the winter or if they stick around??