Dear Santa,

I know it might seem kind of early for us to write you a letter, but we like to get a jump on things and beat the crowd.

When the weather turned nippy here in Western Tidewater and talk of Halloween filled the air, our bells couldn’t help jingle in anticipation of the most wonderful time of year.

Why?

Thanks for asking.

See, Mr. Kringle, we elves at The Tidewater News are eagerly anticipating a few long and fulfilling work days ahead. Starting next month we will begin to receive and compile hundreds of letters and pictures to send to you.

Not having as much extensive training as our fellow elves to the North, we require a good bit of preparation for that most joyous of tasks.

Last year we sent you a little more than 500 letters and photos from area children and pets. We hope you honored their dreams and granted their wishes. They sure did have a lot of them!

Since kids today are so high-tech, we even set up an e-mail address and online form for kids to send their letters over the Information Superhighway. That speeded up production quite a bit, which we elves appreciated immensely. We’re definitely doing that again this year.

Of course, we always take those items from people who bring them in or want to mail them to us.

So, anyway Santa, we find ourselves in the middle of October and dreaming of the 20th of December when our letters print.

We hope all the area kids are sharpening their pencils or typing skills, too.

We’re ready for the challenge and hope you’re ready for the influx of mail from our little ones.

Sincerely,

The elves at The Tidewater News

P.S. If you make it to the TN to drop off gifts (some of us have been naughty) we’ll leave you a 2010 photo calendar and a nice plate of cookies from Mrs. Alphin (if they don’t get eaten first. Did I mention that we’re sometimes naughty?).