Way 27
Drop your change in a jar each day. When full, open a savings account for your child.

The Tracy family may have had more money than God, but as Jeff had done with his sons while they were growing up, the children were taught the value of money, taught that while they did indeed live a life of privilege for the most part, they were no better than anyone else and they had to earn things, not just have them handed to them on a silver platter.

Such was the point of the four glass pickle jars, each capable of holding an entire gallon of liquid, which sat lined up in a neat row on the low built-in bookshelf against one wall of the office – or, the room that was the nerve center of the island during every rescue.

Each day four small children would earn coins from their great-grandmother, their grandfather and Granny Penelope, from their parents or their uncles and aunts.

Each day, as soon as a child got their coins, they would run for the coin jars, find the one labeled with their name, and drop their coins through the slot that their fathers had cut into the plastic lid.

Over time, these jars grew more and more full of coins until one day, the only son of Scott Tracy was the first to discover no more coins would fit into his.

Full of pride, his father flew the boy to Kansas two days after he'd filled his jar, and took him into the very same bank where Jeff had once taken all of his sons to open their first savings account. With great flourish, the teller allowed young D.J. Tracy to help pour the coins into a machine that automatically sorted and counted them.

And flashed the total dollar amount at the top.

D.J. couldn't believe his eyes when he found that he had precisely $398.64 with which to open his account. He then went on to explain to the teller exactly what he was going to do to double and triple that amount, which made both the teller and Scott smile broadly.

"He's got your father in him," the teller said to Scott with a wink.

"I see that," Scott nodded.

After the account had been opened and six-year old D.J. felt appropriately proud of himself and the bank book he now carried, Scott took him back to the farm just so he could finally see the place his Great-Grandma Ruth and Grandpa talked about. There were no animals there anymore, only crops and a home being rented to one of the farmers who tended those crops.

International Rescue was called out, but Jeff handled the coordination of things, and Scott – while he couldn't relax totally – took his son out to dinner in town, just the two of them. He looked at him across the table as he smeared macaroni and cheese all over his cheeks and lips. As he also smeared it on the glass when he lifted it to drink his milk.

Scott remembered his younger brothers so well at this age, all of them. Remembered wiping their noses and washing their faces and hands; sometimes having to fight them tooth and nail to do it. D.J. was easygoing like Virgil, as long as what you wanted to do made sense to him. He was dark-haired, a little darker-skinned thanks to his mother Kaya's heritage, and had his father's cobalt blue eyes. He was introspective like John and upbeat like Gordon. He also, if he managed to get conned into it by Alan and Tin-Tin's daughter, could get up to no-good just as much as Alan had as a child. And, as the bank teller had noted, he also seemed to have the head for business that Jeff Tracy had always had.

Scott leaned back and couldn't help but chuckle when D.J. looked up and grinned open-mouthed, showing off his half-chewed food. "What are you thinking about, Daddy?"

"Our family," Scott replied, folding his napkin and laying it on the table. "You."

"Are we going to stay overnight here?"

"Do you want to?"

D.J. nodded. "But then I have to get home, because I need to start earning more money right away!"

"What for? You have some big purchase in mind?"

"I can't tell you, Daddy!"

Scott shook his head. Secrets were every child's right, and he wouldn't begrudge his own son the ones he wanted to hold onto.

One by one, each of the remaining three littlest Tracys filled their jars. One by one, their fathers took them to Valley Falls, Kansas, to open their first savings account. One by one, they each worked with D.J. to maximize their income.

It wasn't until Christmas morning came, and every Tracy with his wife or girlfriend, and Brains and Kyrano, and even Parker, stood around the Christmas tree, that Scott or anyone else understood why the kids had been so hell-bent on getting so much money together.

There were no presents from any of the children to anyone else under the tree, but leaning against the wall next to the tree, was a gigantic piece of cardboard that had been covered in white paper. Every inch of that was covered with photographs and hand-written notes, some very sloppy and others in neat cursive writing.

It was a thank-you from each and every child at Coralville Children's Hospital, for the generous donation of one gift for every child made by the "Children of International Rescue."

The five brothers all looked at each other. None of them had had a clue. Or, at least, that's what they all led each other to believe.

For John, Alan, Scott and Gordon, that was all very, very true indeed.

But for the one brother who didn't yet have a child of his own – Virgil – it wasn't true at all.

Well, his four little nieces and nephews would never tell of the role he'd played in what they'd done. And Virgil certainly knew how to keep a secret.

And so it was a Merry Christmas for the kids at Coralville. And for the grandchildren of Jeff Tracy who, with their very first philanthropic gesture, had shown they were indeed the children of International Rescue.

Way 28
Once in a while, ask your kids what you can do better. Then do it better.

Jeff had made the mistake once of asking his eldest the best way of getting Mommy her birthday gift without her knowing what it was. Scott had suggested leaving Virgil at home and taking him and the not-yet-talking little Johnny to the jewelry store to pick out a necklace.

The end result of this was that the first words young John ever spoke, were to tell his mother what she was getting. Well, really, how was Scott to have known?

When young Virgil had once asked why the tractor couldn't go any faster than it did, Jeff had made the mistake of asking him how he thought he could make it go faster.

This had yielded the unfortunate result of having to buy a whole new tractor engine after Virgil's concoction of things from the garage that Jeff never had found out all the ingredients of, ruined it completely.

While gazing at the stars from the back yard, John had complained that there were too many lights surrounding their Florida home to see the stars and planets clearly through his telescope. Jeff had made the mistake of telling John he should find a way that the lights wouldn't interfere with what he wanted to observe.

Sadly, the next night every neighbor within a two-block radius complained when they found each street light and porch light had had their bulbs removed some time during daylight hours. Jeff never had figured out how John had gotten up the poles to get at the ones on the street lights, and was sure he didn't want to know.

And, of course, when Gordon fretted about the intakes of the pool filters getting clogged too quickly because of the constant problem of leaves falling into the pool, Jeff had asked Gordon what he thought a good solution for it was.

Much to Jeff's chagrin, he'd come home from work one day (that Gordon had stayed home sick from school) to find all three back yard trees chopped down and removed courtesy of a tree service who insisted Jeff himself had made the emergency call for removal. Jeff wondered how the hell an eleven-year old boy had managed to imitate his voice that well.

While there were many times Jeff had consulted Alan about this, that or the other thing just to get his opinion, the one time he'd done so with less-than-optimal consequences involved an experimental single-use personal jetpack Jeff was working on developing in his garage work area. Alan had believed Jeff could make the single VTOL work very easily indeed if he just bent the exhaust pipe away from the back of the person wearing the jet pack.

Unfortunately for Jeff's garage, Scott's car which had been parked in the garage, and the garage itself, Alan had tried to make the modification and test it out. It had been a little hard for Jeff to explain to the contractors why there the roof of the garage was missing. It had been equally difficult to explain to the auto insurance people how precisely a jet pack got stuck through the grille of Scott's car.

And so, while Jeff's experiences in consulting his children over the years had not always been good ones, as he watched the finalized designs for each Thunderbird craft scroll across his laptop screen, he knew that this time he'd been right in doing so.