A Little too Personal..

Christmas Tree Chapter 4

A couple minutes later Rainy came over looking like a marshmallow. I was about to laugh, until I realized that the jacket she had on was one I had lent her a couple days ago. Backfire! It was snowing pretty hard, talk about a white Christmas!

"Happy Birthday!" She exclaimed over the sound of the snow crunching under her feet. She handed me a a gift bag with lots of pink tissue paper popping out of the top.

"Thanks! Come on in!" I said in my southern accent which is pretty cheesy and not very good.

"No problem" she said as she came inside and started taking off the marshmallow jacket and her boots.

"Ready for Christmas Eve breakfast!?"

"Of course! So, what's the theme this year? Mexican food, Italian, Chinese?"

"I decided to keep it simple this year I went with the classics."

"So what are we waiting for?"she said as she started into the kitchen.

"Morning Rainy" said Dad

"Morning Mr. Clover" she replied

"Hot chocolate?"

"Of course!"she said as he handed her a mug of hot chocolate and a bag of mini marshmallows.

"Me too please!" I said. He poured it into my favorite mug and put a candy cane in it. Man! He knows me really well! Well I AM his daughter.

"Anyone else?" He asked "or do the rest of you guys want strawberry smoothies?"

"Yeah a smoothie sounds good!"said Ben

"Me TOO!" Yelled Isabella from the living room where she was watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

"Ok, two smoothies coming right up!" He poured them "COME AND GET IT!" he yelled from the kitchen. Our family likes to yell. Then we started our feast, we talked about everything from snow to Santa and back again. Then started....the race! Our family's tradition for Christmas Eve was always a laid back morning then rushing to cut down the tree, come home, decorate the tree, and prepare our part of Christmas Eve dinner. Plus, this year the get together was supposed to be at our house. Which made an extra challenge for us this year. We finished breakfast and it was time to get moving!

"All right troops ATTENTION!" Dad had our attention all right! "We've got around....um..." Dad isn't very good with math.

"Eleven hours....?" I wasn't very good with math either.

"Umm...anyway... You guys go up and change. Get nice and warm! It's starting to snow pretty hard out there. Then report back! ARE WE CLEAR?!"

"YES SIR!" We all replied as we started up the stairs. Rainy and I started to search through my closet, and trash my room, in order to find the PERFECT Christmas Eve/birthday outfit. We decided on a cozy hoodie with jeans and my favorite boots and a beanie. I would change just before the party into a more...festive outfit. We all ran downstairs and put on scarves, hats and mittens. Rainy put the marshmallow jacket back on.

"Can I return it later?" She asked.

"No worries!" I said "I'm thinking of burning it!" We both laughed. We walked Rainy back to her house then ran to the car. We talked about our game plan for the day. We decided that since we still had to make a trip to the store for last minute Christmas decorations and ingredients for mashed potatoes,cookies, and a couple other things. I texted Rainy to see if she would babysit Ben and Isabella for a couple hours while Dad and I went shopping. Rainy was AWESOME with kids. She has her own babysitting service, but I jump in with her whenever she has a job with the McMillan kids. They are a handful. They would decorate for those hours and when Dad and I got back home we would all bake, cook, and stir. The only possible delay would be the enormous crowd at the store. But other than that it seemed like a great plan.

We got to the Christmas tree....place? We struggled to get out of the car. It was always a struggle to get out of the car quickly with my family. It always the same story: Wait, where's my bag, where's my shoe, who took my Bonnet! That one was always Isabella. We finally got out and half jumped, half skipped, half speed walked to the counter. My dad asked for a tree with the right measurements and everything else, and I could feel it. This Christmas, and birthday, would be....perfect! Or so I thought...