𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐃𝐎𝐍 𝐆𝐈𝐑𝐋 ||𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘺 𝘮𝘤𝘨𝘪𝘭𝘭||

𝐕. 𝐉𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐭

Oh, winter, what's not to love?

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire (if you're not allergic), Jack Frost nipping at your nose, Yuletide carols being sung by a choir, and folks dressed up like Inuit. If you have by now realized that these are the first lyrics from the Christmas Song then you are correct.

Another great thing about winter! The holidays.

And what makes them even better is the fact that Gwen now had someone special to spend said holidays with. Non-other than her very own Stacey McGill. They'd been together for almost a month now and now came the difficult task of finding the perfect gift for her.

↜☕️↝

Gwen sat next to Stacey as they looked through the photos with the other girls, Gwen having her head softly nestled in Stacey's neck.

"Ooh, this one is so cute," Mary Anne gushed as she picked up a photo of Gwen and Colin just when Colin dumped a bunch of leaves on her head.

"Not for me," Gwen scoffed as the memory came back to haunt her. "I had to wash my hair three times! And it wasn't even a wash day."

"Wait, Dawn, is this you?" Kristy asked as she picked up a photo.

"Yeah,"

"You look great."

"Thanks, Kristy."

"Logan just texted," Mary Anne panicked as she rushed over to Stacey, the 'boy expert', even though she was now proudly dating a girl. "He said, 'Playing,' then ramen emoji?" She asked and Gwen frowned in confusion.

"Yeah... no, thanks." She said and left the two to join the others.

"Made it!" Jessi exclaimed as she rushed in. "Sorry." She said as Kristy's timer went off.

"An alarm? Kristy, really?" Claudia asked as Gwen chuckled and grabbed some smarties, the chocolate kind, not the sweets kind.

"When was this?" Jessi asked as they cleaned up the pictures. "You guys look cute."

"Last week, it was magic hour, so I did an impromptu shoot on the way back from the pizza place," Claudia explained to her.

"You were at ballet." Mallory informed Jessi while Gwen tried not to be taken over by guilt. She knew the feeling of missing out on things.

"It looks like you guys had fun," Jessi said as Gwen sat down in a chair next to Stacey again.

"This meeting is officially in session," Kristy announced. "Now, first order of business, my mom said there's this big town hall meeting in a couple of weeks. They're discussing adding a stop sign on Edgarstone and Kimball."

"Finally!" Jessi and Dawn exclaimed at the same time.

"Anyway, all the adults in that neighbourhood are going to the meeting and they'll all need sitters for the whole afternoon, so I figured we could plan something fun for the kids and offer a special, discounted group rate," Kristy explained and Gwen smiled brightly at the idea.

"Supporting community engagement—" Dawn started.

"And special event services. I love it." Stacey finished.

"Another great idea from a great leader," Gwen spoke.

"Right? Mary Anne and I counted up all the kids in that general area and we came up with 12. We can watch 12 kids. Two for each sitter. Minus Gwen. And without Jessi, of course." Kristy said and Gwen nodded while Jessi frowned and Stacey picked up the ringing phone.