A/N: Cut-out cookie decorating is an annual tradition in my house and there have definitely been some interesting concoctions over the years. I hope that you all have enjoyed some of these little ideas to try at your own homes. Just a side note, there will be one more chapter so that we can see Christmas Day at the Rabb house, but it won't be food related per say.

Twas The Night Before

Christmas is just around the corner and Mac is getting restless. When Harm had originally unveiled his twelve days of Christmas plan, Mac came up with an idea of her own. She had placed an order and was informed two days ago that it had been lost in the mail. She was absolutely crushed. She knew that she probably could have enlisted Trish's help to replace the items, but that would spoil the surprise. The company had assured her that her entire order was being replaced at their expense and it was supposed to arrive today via expedited shipping. Even though it is only 0700, she is on pins and needles waiting for it. Due to it arriving late, it is going to make preparing the gifts a little more difficult as she doesn't have a lot of time with everything else planned today. She had only planning on putting finishing touches on it tonight, not doing the entire thing but even if she had to stay up all night to finish them, it will all be worth it. They still have three dozen cut-out cookies to bake and decorate, presents to wrap, and Harm's surprise for the day.

Harm is roused from his sleep, simply sensing her rigid posture against him. He props his head on his hand and lightly caresses her stomach, "What are you thinking about so loudly over there?"

She sighs, "I'm sorry, Harm. I didn't mean to wake you up. Just thinking about everything we have to finish up for Christmas and wondering if we have enough time to get everything done."

He squeezes her close to him and rests his chin on his shoulder, "Mac, I'm sure that everything will be just perfect. We don't have that much still left to do."

She lowly answers, "I do."

Harm is a little concerned about her behavior. This is his Marine, the one who rarely worries about anything unless she absolutely has to, the one who is normally bailing his six out of whatever predicament he manages to get them into. Trying to reassure her, he whispers in her ear "You know I am here to help if you need it."

That sends her jumping out of bed, "You can't!"

Now thoroughly perplexed, he asks, "What do you mean I can't?"

She sits back down, "I'm sorry, Harm. It's something personal that I am working on for you, Trish, Frank, and Grams. It's part of why I have been holing up in the office for at least an hour every night. I want it to be a surprise."

Harm shakes his head in disbelief, "And here I thought you were just in there wrapping presents every night." It was an unspoken rule in the house that when the door to the office was closed that the person inside wasn't to be disturbed unless it was an emergency since either Harm or Mac were often working on cases in there and it sometimes involved either heavy analysis or pictures of evidence that didn't need to be seen by little eyes.

Mac's lips turn up in a small smile, "I have wrapped some things in there, but I still have a bunch of that to do too."

Harm wraps his arms around her and pulls her on top of him, "I will take over the rest of the wrapping of gifts that aren't for me, so that you can have time to finish whatever you are doing in there. If you need extra time, I can do the houses with Trisha and Matthew by myself."

Mac frowns, "No. I want to do it with you guys. This whole adventure has been so much fun and I don't want to miss out. If I knew what time my stuff was getting here it would help."

Harm furrows his brow, "You don't have everything you need?"

She replies, "Not yet. And if it doesn't get here this morning, I'm going to go have to fight with the crazed last-minute shoppers to see if I can find something similar to what I ordered, and I'll probably have to solicit your mom's advice which would spoil my surprise, at least for her."

Harm places his hand on the back of her neck, and pulls her lips to his trying to distract her from her thoughts for at least a few minutes. Her lips are just a hair away from his when she whispers, "I know what you are trying to do."

He whispers back, "And I'm going to win," before capturing her lips with his and deepening the kiss until he hears her moan.

They only part when the need for air arises. Mac rests her head on his shoulder, "You don't play fair, Sailor."

Rubbing his hand in loving strokes up and down her back, he chuckles "I'm only making you take your own advice. Sometimes you just need to stop thinking and just feel. Everything will work out as it should, I promise."

They lay there content for the next several minutes until they are interrupted by a chime on Mac's cellphone. She turns to check it and it's an update on her tracking. Leaping out of bed again, she screams in delight, "It's here! Come on, I'll need some help bringing the boxes in."

Harm throws some pants on, and follows her downstairs. He opens the door to see the Fed Ex man setting down placing a small box on top of three other very large boxes marked "heavy" and "fragile." He remarks, "That's the last one. Happy Holidays!"

Harm's eyes go wide at the stack of boxes as tall as he is, and murmurs in response, "Merry Christmas."

Harm sets the small box addressed to his mother to the side, and picks up one of the larger ones not realizing it is going to be quite that heavy. He groans, "What in the world did you order, Mac?"

She crinkles her nose, "Never mind what I ordered. Would you please just take it in the office? I'll bring the other one, and then you can grab the last one. And no peeking around in there!"

Harm has just brought the last box in when he hears the kids running down the stairs. Wanting to intercept them before they run this direction, he remarks, "I'll get them breakfast while you make sure you have everything you need."

Mac gives him a soft smile, "Thanks, Harm. I'll be in there shortly."

Mac opens each box and carefully inspects the contents to ensure that everything is there and that nothing is broken. Satisfied that she will be able to bring her plan to fruition later tonight, she heads to the kitchen to join her family.

While everyone is eating their breakfast, Gigi starts pulling out the ingredients for homemade icing to frost the cookies with. Harm admonishes, "Grams, you need to eat too."

She argues, "I'll just grab a piece of toast. I've got work to do here!"

Harm inwardly laughs at how much his wife reminds him of his grandmother. They both think of others before themselves and everything has to be done right now. He isn't having any of it. As he starts to stand up, Mac places her hand on his arm. She says, "Grams, please come sit with us. I'll help you make the frosting after we eat. You'll need your strength today."

Grams rolls her eyes and takes her seat at the table, loading her dish with cinnamon rolls and eggs. Harm gives Mac a look that clearly asks, "How come she listens to you and not me?" Mac just gives him a sweet smile in return. Even after all these years he still hasn't learned the right way to talk to women. His charm doesn't work on any of the women in this house, and without it he either develops foot in mouth syndrome or is just clueless on what he should say. She still finds it to be one of his endearing qualities…well most of the time.

An hour later, they have all the cookies laid out with multiple colors of icing and almost every kind of topping you could imagine. Trisha uses green icing with a star tip to decorate a wreath, which she adds cinnamon red hots to for the berries. Matthew decided that he needed to frost the same shape all white, add red sprinkles, and dump shark sprinkles on top. When Mac asked why the water was red, he simply replied, "Shark bit someone, it's blood."

Harm had found it quite amusing until Mac shot him a very dirty look as she chastised her son, "I don't think that is appropriate for Christmas cookies." Matthew frowned at first, but then grabbed a tree and made it really pretty with a yellow star and various colored fruit imperials as bulbs. Mac tousled his hair, "That's much better. I want to see pretty cookies not disturbing ones."

Trisha was trying desperately to create a flower on one of the bell-shaped cookies, but the tip kept messing up. Harm noticed her frustration and told her, "I've never seen a tie die flower before. That's pretty cool."

Trisha scrunched up her nose, "That's not what I was going for, Dad, but that's a good idea!" She took several of the smaller cookies and created different tie-dyed patterns. When she was done with those, Mac helped her make the perfect rose.

Somewhere in the mix of the sprinkles, Mac had actually found some that looked like eyes. They worked perfect for one of the gingerbread men, even if his foot had broken off during the baking process. Grams had been thoroughly upset when it broke, but laughed it off when Trisha had said, "I guess we won't have any problem catching that one."

By the time all the cookies were decorated, every member of the family was wearing near as much icing on their fingers as the cookies. Harm challenged them to see who could get their tongue to change to coolest color after they licked the icing off their fingers. Trisha ended up winning when her tongue resembled the tie-dyed cookies she had loved making earlier.

Harm sent the kids into the living room, with one cookie each, to watch the Polar Express while they boxed up all the cookies and cleaned up from their fun. He needed to chop some vegetables for their houses. He was quite serious when he told the checkout lady at the grocery store that then gingerbread houses would likely happen next year, but what he didn't tell her was that they were going to be making vegetable lodges instead. Veggies were a little more durable than cookies.

When the movie was finished, Harm had all the veggies ready. They would use carrots stacked in a criss-cross shape for the log cabin and the fire. He had small red potato slices for the path to the lodge, broccoli for the plants, cauliflower for the snow, celery sticks for the roof, red peppers for the front door, mushrooms for the chimney, cucumber slices for decoration, and a cream cheese dip to hold it all together. Matthew was thrilled as one of his favorite pastimes was building various establishments with his Linkin Logs™ sets. Trisha's only complaint was that she wanted a purple house instead of an orange one. Harm accommodated her request by dunking her portion of the carrots in blue food coloring. Mac decided to change up the design slightly and grabbed a tomato for hers. She wanted a tiki hut instead of a log cabin. Harm chuckles, "Missing our time at the beach, Mac?"

She smiled, "As cold as it is outside, most definitely! I'm in need of warm beaches, and a gorgeous Sailor."

Taking the hint that they haven't had a vacation with just the two of them in quite awhile, he responds, "I'll see what I can do about that."

Frank steps in, and whispers something in Mac's ear. She grins like the Cheshire Cat, "Thanks, Frank."

Harm tilts his brow, "What's that about?"

Mac, concentrating on getting her roof straight, answers "Classified."

He purses his lips at the mere mention of that four-letter word that should have been banished from their vocabulary years ago. Noticing him getting riled up, she laughs, "You will see tomorrow. Behave, and help Matt finish the master lodge that seems to have overtaken the table!" As Harm admired Matthew's construction technique, he was quite impressed. Definitely going to be an engineer of some kind when he grows up.

They left their creations to dry while the elders prepared four different variations of lasagna for dinner. Harm went to watch some television with the kids, and Mac was able to go work on her little project until dinner time. After dinner, they were attending Christmas Mass at the Navel Chapel where Chaplain Turner was preaching, and stopping by the Vietnam Wall to wish Harmon Rabb, Sr. a "Merry Christmas" before returning to the house where they would leave Santa a glass of milk and a plate of cookies, and everyone else could place their gifts under the tree.