The Busiest Christmastime of the Year

Chapter 1 - Thanksgiving Eve

Julietta

When Christmas is a month away, you may still have a great time during your shift, because as a magician, I recently finished doing a Thanksgiving performance at an elementary school in the gymnasium for an assembly for all the students. There, some of the magic tricks I did were making a stack of fruit-flavored pies appear on a table by using a cape, making various fruits and vegetables magically appear in a cornucopia, and making a rafter of turkeys come out of a magician's hat.

About the part I said that I made turkeys come out of a hat, that trick was not the best idea, because the turkeys were scattering uncontrollably, and the effect of that trick was that some of the second-graders, third-graders, and fourth-graders were trying to catch them. I am not sure how long I will regret doing that trick, but at least I'm glad one of the teachers called Animal Control to handle the problem. I am also pleased that the teachers, vice principal, and principal were not too upset with me.

Right now, I am driving back home to pick up my kids -- Jackie-Anne, Jackson, and Jacob -- so we can do some last-minute Thanksgiving grocery shopping. I had a whole list of items written on my phone's Notepad app I jotted down not too long ago.

Once I arrived at the house, I parked the car close to the curb and pulled out my phone to call Jackie-Anne. After she answered my call, she said that she and the boys would prepare themselves now. While waiting for them to head to the car, I decided to play a little Sudoku game on my phone.

The moment I was about to fill in the last two squares in my five-by-five Sudoku puzzle, I heard Jackie-Anne knock on one of the passenger doors. So, I opened both passenger doors to let my kids inside. After my kids fastened their seatbelts, I drove to Wealth Mart, which was about to close at 6:30 p.m. due to Thanksgiving occurring the next day.

Before we went inside the store, Jackie-Anne pulled out a shopping cart and Jackson got a wipe from the wipe dispenser so he could clean the cart's handle. Once the cart was clean, we went inside the building, I began pushing the cart, and my kids stayed behind me.

The first few items we were going to buy were supplies to make two strawberry rhubarb pies, so we headed to the aisle that had all those crates of fruits and vegetables. We found the plastic boxes of strawberries, but Jackie-Anne and I had to inspect each box to make sure none of them had gone rotten. Luckily for us, not a single strawberry in any of the plastic boxes was rotten; Jackie-Anne put one box of strawberries in the cart, and the next items we were going to buy were the premade pie crust, sugar, butter, and any other ingredients we would need.

Ciara

So far this week, as well as the previous one, the employees here at my diner have been super busy because, whenever customers were halfway or nearly done with their meals, most of them would request dessert. That does not seem to be a problem, right? Well, it pretty much is a problem because two of the menu items were our limited-time, Thanksgiving desserts, which became very popular choices: lemon cheesecake and cranberry fudge.

The reason that is a problem is that fewer customers chose not to order any of the common desserts -- like brownies, tarts, or funnel cakes. Then, when people are done with their food and are ready to pay the check, most of them ask for plastic containers to save their desserts for the next day.