The wake-up call was the same time it always was, even if it was a bit less enthusiastic about the morning and seemed to be dreading the usual gathering. There were many reasons why that could possibly be, the top of the list naturally being that it was the one day of the year where all sorts of strange people came into the house, ate from the mounds of food that was prepared for the occasion, and left without any real way of knowing they were ever there. What was the deal with Thanksgiving, anyway? Was it just a day for eating and being with family? Was there more to it than that?

Sergio didn't really know, and he didn't really care either. He just knew that it meant getting to see people that showered him with attention that his parents didn't, and it also meant the one day where the kids had their own dinner table, one that put him right next to the animals so he could feed them the food he didn't want to eat. (That wasn't a thing he was supposed to do, but it was something he did anyway just because there was something cool to watching a cat attack whatever was in some of the weird foods they were given.) What wasn't there to be excited about the day that was upon them?

As he laid in his bed, pretending to be asleep so that his wake-up call was a proper one, he thought about what he had seen the night before, with his parents sort of fighting and his brother being so upset about something. But there wasn't time to really dwell on that, not when said brother was coming into the room, sneaking up on him and grabbing him from his "slumber" just like he did every morning. This time, rather than them wrestling to the floor, nothing much happened after Andres had wrapped his arms around him, and it wasn't until they were still laying there a minute later that he realized that it wasn't like every morning after all.

To get his older brother to talk, Sergio pushed him off of the bed, and once he had dramatically rolled to the floor like he did sometimes in their fights, he rolled over so that he was a looming presence over the bigger boy. "Why are you being so weird?" he asked, seeing that he on the floor wasn't getting into the fun of almost wrestling. "Did you get yelled at again? Did the cat get to you?"

"No, don't worry about it. Just get up and get ready for today. I guess we still have stuff to do before everyone gets here. At least, that's what our dearest father told me when I spoke with him this morning." Just the way that Andres spit those last words made it clear that he was not happy about having had to do that, and Sergio slightly regretted asking about the situation. That regret was quickly replaced with more curiosity, though, and he followed up with asking about what sort of stuff there was to do. "I don't know what you have to do. Not my problem. I just know that I'm stuck, with him, in the kitchen, again!"

"That can't be too bad. I like trying to help make food." His face lighting up with a smile, Sergio decided to roll off the bed, landing directly on top of his brother, who pushed him off and onto the floor next to him. "What? Did I do a bad thing there?"

"No, you just don't need to be on me. I've got to go wake the others up before I get in trouble again for being too slow." As Andres picked himself up and went to the door to leave, Sergio got to his feet as fast as he could and followed his brother, grabbing onto his arm when he got the chance. "What are you doing? You don't need to follow me."

"You seem so sad, big brother. Can I make you less sad?" When he was given a negative response in return—or, rather, no verbal response at all—he decided that maybe it was for the best if he didn't pursue further. The older boy left him there to get ready and get out to the kitchen on his own, which wasn't something that usually took him very long to do. On this particular morning, though, it took a lot longer, mostly because he wanted to make sure he looked his very best for the guests that were coming. So instead of just throwing clothes on and looking decent, he actually went and made sure that his hair (which was kept short because if it grew any more than a couple of inches long it would start looking gross, a curse to having what his parents always called "horse hair") was perfectly in order. He may have been young, but he knew that a boy always had to look good when people who weren't family were going to be around.

How was he supposed to keep looking good, though, when he was told he had to go make sure that the front yard was completely perfect before people started showing up? When he had been told that he was supposed to do that, his first reaction was to look outside and see that there was a little bit of a wind blowing, just enough that it would ruin his hard work that he had put into his appearance. "But, but, but…" he repeated, turning his attention from the window to his parents, "I don't wanna do that. Too icky."

"You're just trying to make excuses, aren't you? It's perfectly find out there for you to do what you've been so kindly asked to do." At the sound of more repetition of a single word, the same one as before, Heather laughed, only for a moment before she got serious. "No, none of that. You are too big to be trying to fight what you know you have to do."

"But the wind! Momma, I can't with the wind!" He pointed to his hair, which looked exactly as it had when he woke up except wet with sink water, before realizing that trying to argue with his mom was not going to work for him. So, with that in mind, he looked to his father, hoping that he'd be easier to win over. "Please don't make me do this, dad. I can't get my hair messy when people will be here!"

There was a split second where he thought maybe he was getting somewhere, when he saw a thoughtful expression on his father's face, but when Alejandro spoke it was the exact opposite of what Sergio had wanted to hear. "You do have a decent argument when it comes to making sure you look your best for our guests. However, if you do not do it, then no one will, and we just cannot have that."

Without even considering the consequences of his words, he was quick to reply and try and fight the denial. "Andres can do it! I can help cook and he can clean outside!" He put his hands on his face and pushed the corners of his mouth into a smile, hoping that the switch he had offered would be enough to get him out of having to do his work. There was no such luck, not when he wasn't even told his idea was a bad one and was just given a pointed finger out of the room. That meant the end of his chances, and it meant that if something went wrong with his hair, he'd just have to fix it later. As he scuffled out of the kitchen, he could hear his parents saying something behind him, but he wasn't really paying attention because he was just so bummed out that he didn't get his way.

"Hi there, 'Gio!" the chipper voice that belonged to Ryden exclaimed, right up in Sergio's face without him realizing his brother was even there. "Whatcha gonna do?"

"I'm going to go outside and clean up," he replied, his tone solemn and more dramatic than it needed to be. "You should go to the kitchen to be told what to do." Pushing past his younger brother, it didn't occur to him that he had just told someone who could have very easily done his job for him to go away. But when he turned to see if Ryden was still there, he was already gone, and that meant that there really was no way for him to get out of this task.

Sighing, Sergio went to the front door, unlocking it and opening it to see how bad the wind outside really was. It wasn't nearly as bad as the plants blowing outside the window had made it seem, and he closed the door to put his shoes and jacket on. Sure, it wasn't super cold out, but it could easily get cold while he was out there, and he needed to be safe. As he was getting his left shoe on, the right one still to come, he sneezed, whacking his forehead into his knee and disorienting himself for just a moment. In that moment, he attracted the attention of one giant dog by the name of Sofia, who came running to him and began sniffing him to make sure he was okay. He was, but she didn't know that, because she was just an overprotective dog who wanted to make sure her boy was as fine as he could be.

"Off of me!" he squealed, pushing the dog that was much bigger away than him so that her face wasn't in his. "I'm okay, Sofia! Go play with someone else! I have to do stuff!" But the dog didn't listen and watched him carefully as he finished getting ready, and when he went outside she followed him, being trained well enough to know that she did not leave the yard at all. Should he have asked first before bringing the dog out with him? Probably, but again, Sergio wasn't exactly one for thinking before he did something. He just dealt with the consequences as they came, if there were any to be had—and with how the dog behaved, there probably weren't going to be many consequences.

His job was to pick up the toys that were in the yard, put them where they belonged, and to make sure that there wasn't any trash on the ground. Easy enough, especially with a big dog who was as tall as he was as a companion. She was great at finding toys that were hidden in the grass, picking them up and bringing them to him, or even just giving a low bark at them to alert him to their presence. Together they were an efficient team, and that meant that there was no way he was going to regret bringing her outside. At one point, while he was taking an armful of toys to the side of the house where they belonged, he heard a strange noise back around front but didn't question it, as sometimes noises were just noises and didn't need investigating. Then Sofia started actually barking and he could hear what sounded like laughter in between her loud woofs. He dropped the toys as fast as he could and ran back out front to see who was daring to approach his dearest dog.

There was a person, one he recognized from some gathering in recent memory, but he couldn't remember her name. She, however, quickly recognized him. "Hey there, Sergio!" she called to him, waving with the hand that wasn't petting Sofia. "What are you doing out here? Playing welcoming committee? Because, let me tell you, I feel plenty welcomed by you and your pretty puppy here."

"I'm, uh, picking up toys," he replied, cautiously approaching the person, his eyes fixated on her red hair and almost crazy smile. "And she's not a puppy. She's a big dog. Just like I'm a big boy."

"Uh huh, cool! She's like a puppy, though, with how she just comes up to me and starts barking and wanting to be my friend. Wish I knew what she was really trying to say. Never got around to learning to speak dog." The person laughed some more, and Sergio froze in his place, trying to understand if someone could actually speak dog or not. "Hey, come on, aren't you going to come here and take her in or something? I love to play with her, mmhmm, but she's going to try and eat the food that people are going to bring in if she stays out here."

"People brought food?" His eyes widened as the person nodded, and it was then that he noticed that there were several cars present that hadn't been there before. "Oh, okay! Let me take her in and let my dad know people are here!" Forgetting that he had been hesitant to come close to this person moments before, he skipped happily up to her, grabbing Sofia's collar and directing her back to the front door, which he opened, hollered inside that people were showing up, and pushed the dog inside, before closing the door again.

No sooner had the door latched was he picked up and turned to be facing a different person, one that he definitely did recognize just by sight. "Oh my gosh, you have gotten so big since I last saw you!" Sierra gushed, holding him tightly to her, and he gave her a big grin. If there was one person who wasn't family that cared about him and his brothers, it was their unofficial aunt Sierra, who was always down for giving them love and attention when she was around. "What are you doing outside by yourself? That's not okay, and your parents really need to be told that they can't do that to a cutie like you."

"He told me he was out here picking up toys. Which, correct me if I'm wrong here, wasn't that what the last kid we saw out here was doing? Do they not know proper toy storage around here?" The other woman gave what sounded like a cackle. "Nah, just playing around. We shouldn't get involved in their parenting stuff though, Sierra. I mean, they've got to know those ropes better than we do."

Sierra hugged him for a bit longer before putting him back on his feet and turning to face the other woman. "I know they know it better, Izzy, but it doesn't mean I can't remind them that they have to remember people would kill for evidence that these kids actually exist. I don't want them to send a kid outside to never see them again."

"They'd see me again," Sergio said, not sure at all what was happening between Sierra and Izzy but knowing that he wanted to give input. "I love my family." He didn't know that they weren't talking about a willing sort of never seeing someone again, rather a kidnapping sort of thing, and even their slightly sad faces after he had spoken didn't clue him into that conclusion. That was perfectly fine, however, because he wasn't going to be taken from his front yard with two people who could watch over him around, and he sure wasn't going to disappear when the rest of the people arriving for the day's events got out of their vehicles and congregated near the front door, all faces that he knew to some extent and was more than happy to let into the house.

Or, rather, start to open the door for, just to have his father be on the other side of the door at the same time, pulling it open and dragging the kid along for the ride. Everyone got at least a chuckle out of that.

Since the meal wasn't until many hours later, and everyone had gathered early to help out in whatever way they could, that meant that there was a lot of people just sitting around and talking, while they waited for some room to open up where the cooking was happening. This made great use of the chairs in the kitchen, because it allowed for them to sit and watch and let everyone be part of the conversation. As she always tried to be, Sierra was in the middle of the action, trying to make sure she caught every snippet of gossip that all of her friends shared, just so that she had something to post about on her blogs later that night.

"So," she started, "does anyone have anything interesting to share with everyone here today?" How else would she get the gossip she wanted from the people she had convinced to come out to this lovely house with her, as well as the people who lived in it? Maybe it was a bit weird that, aside from her and Cody, who were definitely invited by the homeowners, she was the one in charge of selecting who got an invite for the most part. But it meant that she'd get the chance to pick who got to see her unofficial nephews, and she had to make sure that the people she invited were going to follow the same rules she had to, those ones about no pictures or anything about the boys leaving the property. No one bit the bait she was laying out, and that meant it was time to ask someone in particular. "Izzy, come on, you've got to have something to share!"

"Nope, kind of out of 'cool stuff' happening in my life," Izzy replied, before bursting into her cackling laugh at the sound of whatever she was heating up starting to boil. "Bet someone else can answer that for you. Like maybe Courtney! Law life, yeah?"

"Oh please, don't act like you're actually interested in my law stuff. Why, if I wanted to, I'm sure I could let the authorities know exactly where you are right now." There was a devious grin on Courtney's face as she spoke, which caused Izzy to stop laughing and mutter something about trust under her breath. "Anyway, there isn't much to talk about in terms of my personal life, although I'm sure that someone who wasn't asked to come out to this get-together from across the country may have more to share that's, ahem, relevant to any of your interests."

"Or maybe you're hiding something that you don't want any of us to know." Speaking with a sassy tone to her voice, Gwen gave Courtney a look that made it clear she wasn't buying into her response, and with reason. "Come on, what's his name, what does he look like, is he going to leave you for me and you blame me for it? Give us details, woman."

Courtney laughed, an infectious giggle that spread to a few people in the room, mostly the children but Sierra got in on it too. When she collected herself, she was still giving a giggle here and there but she had definitely gone back to her grin from before, her cheeks a little rosier than before. "There are no details to be given. You of all people should know this, Gwen! If there was a guy, I would have told you first thing. Just to make sure that what happened that one time didn't happen again."

"Wasn't aware that I signed up for listening to high school drama when I agreed to come to this thing." Putting a hand to his mouth to cover his very fake yawn that he gave, Noah looked to Sierra with a disapproving expression on his face. "Please tell me that you didn't make Izzy bring me here with her just so I could have to suffer through this."

"No, that's not why I asked her to bring you. I really thought we'd be having some sort of fun right now!" Sierra pounded a fist on the counter, attracting the attention of everyone in the room, despite Cody next to her telling her to calm down. "I'm not calming down right now, Codykins, because I need to know what's going on with these people! What good is Thanksgiving for if we aren't learning secrets about each other?"

"A holiday for being thankful, maybe?" Noah suggested, knowing that his answer was not the one she was looking for.

She replied to that by pounding the counter again, and to her surprise a strong hand was placed on hers to keep her from doing it a third time. "I will have to ask you to refrain from making noises such as that one, as it disrupts everyone in the house, and I am sure that you do not want to deal with the wrath of someone people when they are disrupted." Once he was finished speaking, Alejandro lifted his hand off of Sierra's, and she seemed to have gotten his message, evident by the way she pulled her hand off the counter and put it in her lap. "Thank you for understanding why we cannot have you doing that."

"You got it. Except I don't really understand why I can't do that. Usually there's no rule against it, and man oh man have we caused some rackets with fists and stuff." Sierra leaned forward enough to see the seat on the other side of Cody, where Sergio had situated himself to be part of the action. "Little guy down there really gets into it when we start trying to out-loud each other."

"Yes, and that has been fine on other occasions, but today I cannot allow you to do that." The sentence was punctuated with the sound of smaller fists banging on the countertop, which caused two different reactions: some, namely Sierra and Andres (who was, unwillingly, in between his father and Izzy, helping cook), were cracking smiles at the sound, while others, particularly every other adult in the room, was looking at the culprit with varying states of shock on their face. None was more shocked at the obvious disrespect than the man who had just said it wasn't allowed, though. "You may find your behavior right now to be funny, but I need you to stop. Do you want your mother to come in here and be very disappointed that one of her own children is annoying her?"

Without stopping his hand-banging, Sergio's face lit up in a smile and he nodded. "Yeah! She will come in here then!" His reply got him a sigh and a shake of the head in return from his father, who was clearly not going to try and stop the kid from whatever he might have been causing. After all, trying to punish him in front of so many other people would only make him seem like a terrible parent, and that was the close to the last thing that was needed then.

The only reason it wasn't the actual last thing was because the banging was eliciting the exact response from the only person not present that had been warned against. "Okay, if one of you really wanted me in here, you've got me. Because obviously it's wrong for me to try and ever get to relax a little bit before everything goes to hell around here." Her voice coming from right outside the entryway to the kitchen, nearly everyone turned to look to see what sort of murderous expression Heather would be wearing if she was speaking like that, but they were all made to be disappointed when she appeared and the only negativity her face was exuding was the icy glare she was shooting—and without even looking at his mom, Sergio knew that he was being glared at and promptly stopped his noisemaking. "You can all turn back to whatever you were doing before I was called in here, thanks," she said, when she dropped her glare and saw all the pairs of eyes focusing on her. "Glad you all think I'm important, but this isn't necessary."

"Huh, I'd say it is pretty necessary, since you disappeared when we all showed up, and haven't bothered to make it look like you're ready for the day," Noah replied, as he went back to leaning his chair against the wall and staring up at the ceiling to ignore what was going on around him. "But that's just my opinion."

As he finished speaking, there were a few different things that happened all at once: the two youngest children in the room realized that their mom was present and they screamed and ran to her; Gwen and Courtney, who had each been holding one of those kids, looked to each other with quizzical looks based on what Noah had just said; and Sierra, also taking in Noah's words, had her eyes widen to nearly the size of plates and she covered her mouth to stifle a scream. Ignoring the fact that she was now being clung to by two kids very excited to see her, Heather's only reaction to the situation was to look at Sierra and mime zipping her lips closed. "Don't you say anything, got it? Last thing we need here is you starting rumors or something because of this."

"You got it." Giving a thumbs-up, Sierra also did the zipping motion, before nearly screaming to herself again. Since no one else really knew how to take that exchange, things fell back to how they had been before the loud noises had started, with just idle chitchat and the occasional attempt to start conversations that always fell flat.

Then, after some position shuffling in terms of who was assisting with the cooking, Izzy, from her new seated location, noticed something hanging on the fridge that she felt needed to be pointed out. "Oh hey cool, hangman!" she exclaimed, pointing at the setup. "Looks like someone's already started one, too! I think we should play it!"

"I think so also," Andres said, his voice barely able to be heard by anyone except his father, who told him to not focus on what everyone else was doing and instead worry with the cooking. "No, I want to play. I've wanted to since yesterday."

"Come on, he can pay enough attention to two things at once to make it work. Let's give this a shot, since I'm sure everyone here would like to get this one out of the way so they can play their own." In the time since she had come into the room and had her moment of telling Sierra to not say something, there had been a bit of a temperament change in Heather, as she had quickly taken to just talking with some of the people present up until the moment hangman was mentioned. "Except, before we start, I'm setting some rules."

"Is one of the rules going to be that we can't guess the words outright? Because from the way she's starting to shake," Noah motioned to Sierra, who was swaying where she now stood, "she's about five seconds from giving us the answer."

"No, the rule is that she can't participate, because she was told to not say anything. Last time I checked, if she answered, she'd be going against what she promised me when she zipped her big mouth shut." There was a disappointed groan that Sierra gave off, but she understood that a promise meant she couldn't go against it, and so she had to not play. "There, that's the rule, now does anyone want to guess a letter?"

What Heather had failed to get from what Noah had said there was that there needed to be a rule against guessing the words without any letters, because thanks to how she was insisting that someone be quiet about it, added in with the way Sierra was acting about it, everyone who wasn't a child knew what it was. And no one was really going to give any of the kids a chance to guess letters, especially not when Izzy was around and she could move faster than anything, arranging the plastic letters on the blanks of the whiteboard before anyone thought to tell her not to do that. "There, that oughta do the trick!" she said as she stepped away from her masterpiece, a filled out hangman puzzle with absolutely no bad guesses, nothing drawn on the little gallows that had existed for years.

"I…don't get it." A moment or two after the puzzle was filled in, he got the chance to look at it, and that was all Andres thought to say, until he added, "Is this a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know what one of those words is, so I can't tell. I bet my brothers can't tell either, and I think it would be nice if someone would explain…"

"You don't know what one of those words is?" Courtney repeated, before clearing her throat and acting like she didn't sound like she was finding it weird. "I'm honestly surprised that you haven't seen it before, living in this house. Why, that phrase up there must be one of the most common things said in this house, seeing how your parents are."

Her swaying turning to nearly bouncing where she stood, Sierra figured it was fine for her to speak, but before she said a word she tried to give Alejandro a hug (he laughed, but refused to let her) and then went to be by Heather's side, starting to actually bounce by that point. "I'm not going to agree with what Courtney said about that being a common thing said around here, but oh my gosh it's going to be at this rate! Another baby!"

Their ears catching the last word, both of the older boys looked to each other, looks of confusion and worry taking over their faces. Simultaneously, their eyes tracked to that whiteboard, and everything sort of clicked for them both. Of all the ways to be informed that they'd be getting another sibling, this had to have been one of the worst, especially since it wasn't even their parents who told them.

To add more to the ugliness of that entire situation, there was still a meal to be had a few hours later that everyone had to sit through. Unlike previous versions of this get-together, there was actually something for everyone to talk about, even if the conversation was limited strictly to the adults and the kids were relegated to listening only—and they were more involved in the subject matter than nearly anyone else in the room. But since they were at their separate little table, they weren't allowed to participate in the chatter that they definitely had to listen to, if only to make sure that this whole situation was real. Why else would a group of adults spend so much time talking about months or weeks or something to that effect?

"So, okay, let's get down to the real business now with all this!" Much like she always was, Sierra was trying her hardest to be in control of the conversation, and although it wasn't her place to be, no one was going to argue with her about it. "Since now that everyone totally knows there is a baby, which was super obvious anyway, but whatever, we need to know details! Give us details!"

"Don't try and force them," Cody warned, looking at Sierra with a slightly exasperated expression, knowing that she wasn't going to listen to him. "If you get too pushy, they're just going to hide everything from you, because they can."

"They would never!" she snapped back, before taking a few deep breaths to try and collect herself before she lost whatever cool she had and started getting pushier than she already was. "Or, I guess, maybe they would a little bit. Probably should back off just a tad." Her words were punctuated with little hand gestures that showed just how much she felt she needed to back off, and while they weren't exactly what Cody wanted to see from her, at least it was something.

However, it was pointless as neither person who could give details was really paying attention to the bickering. They were just focusing on their meal as well as each other, trying their hardest to not notice that everyone else in the room, excluding the kids, seemed to only want to talk about this big news that had been revealed. Yet it was one of those kids who was the one to get the conversation really started, and it only happened when it hit the youngest one like a ton of bricks that he wasn't going to be the baby in the family anymore. His way of dealing with it was to grab a handful of vegetables and throw it across the table, hitting two of his brothers in the process, and then screaming. "I know, I totally get that way too sometimes when I realize I'm not the one getting attention in a group," Izzy—who was able to watch the incident from where she sat—said with a laugh. "I can definitely relate to what must be going through your tiny little head. At one point, everyone was watching me for what crazy things I'd do, and then I got replaced by someone less crazy and it hurt. Did I care? Not really, but still!"

"If that is meant to be an insult to him based on this situation, I do not appreciate it on his behalf. While your story there would be humorous if he were able to really understand it, there is no point in saying it as he does not know what you are saying." Without looking at who he was speaking to, Alejandro managed to tell Izzy off and get her to sit wordlessly, unsure of what she should do next. He, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was going to do, and that was to get up, grab the kid who was now throwing food at the dog (who was more than happy to clean up the mess he was making), and return to his seat with the kid now on his lap. "Besides, can we not look at this face," he motioned to the displeased expression that Trevin was presently giving, "and see how thrilled he is to soon be gaining a younger brother?"

"Excuse me, but I'm pretty sure this one's going to be a girl, so if you could stop acting like things are set in stone, that would be great." The way Heather spoke, it was as if what had just been said had deeply offended her, and there was no way she was going to let things slide so easily. "Besides, where would the fun be if you were right yet again? Oh, I know, there wouldn't be any fun anywhere. Because we are done having sons, okay?"

"No, mi amor, we are certainly not done, and you know this as well as I do."

"Don't act like just because you've been right four times now, it means that you'll be right every time. It's a fifty-fifty chance each time, and this time it's going to fall in my favor." She looked around the table at everyone, seeing that most of them had concerned looks on their faces, and the pride she had just been showing off in her assertion that she was right quickly subsided. "Uh, this is the part when you're all supposed to agree with me."

Like with how the conversation had really gotten started, the lack of agreement first came from over at the kids' table. "Mom, I don't want a sister, no way!" Sergio said, covering his mouth after he did when he saw his mom gasp. "I-I mean, we have Andres! He's like a girl!"'

"I am not like a girl," the boy who was mentioned muttered, as he saw that his father had sat up a bit straighter at that comment. "And besides, a sister would just mean more work to do. More toys and stuff like that. So no thank you." At the mention of more work, Ryden had started shaking his head and repeating that he also didn't want a sister, using the reason that cleaning his own toys up was bad enough.

"That's really cute, how none of them seem to want what would be best around here," Gwen commented, making sure to get a good look at the four boys before she had said anything. "I think adding a girl to this mix would make things more interesting."

"Yeah, except she would be eaten alive, or she would be the worst person to ever exist. No in-between, not in this family of eels." Noah crossed his arms in front of him, leaning back in his chair. "Although I do agree that it would be interesting, I'd rather not have to hear from Sierra that the poor kid died because she wasn't like her brothers."

Division lines were drawn, and when the points were done being argued and countered, it was very clear that almost no one felt that bringing a girl into the male-dominated family would be a good idea. In fact, the only people who felt that way aside from Heather were Gwen and Sierra, the second one only leaning that way because she wanted to see what a little Burromuerto girl would look like; everyone else, with the exception of Courtney, let it be known that they thought another boy would be best. After the arguing had ended, and the lopsided results were revealed, that was when Courtney decided she was going to put in her reasoning for not picking either side. "I can't in good conscience say either way," she started, "simply because I know the names you slap on these children, and I'd have to know what you'd name this one and decide if it would be a name they'd come to me to have changed or not before I could even pick. Sorry if that seems like a bad reason for me being indecisive, but I can't say one way or the other until I know this kid won't be screwed for the first years of life with a bad name."

"Bad names? Surely when you speak like this, you are referring to the two children with names that were picked by their mother. The names I selected were family names, unlike the ones that Heather had chosen. Which, I must confess, I have no idea what inspired her to pick such, er, lovely names." Alejandro gave a smug smile at his wife, who rolled her eyes back at him. "What, do you take offense to the fact that I find the names you gave two of our children slightly strange?"

"Not at all. But I know it kills you inside that the kid you're holding has got one of the least proper and pristine names that I could manage to come up with." If there was to be more to that thought, it was derailed by Sierra giving a little cough, as if there was something that was forgotten, which made Heather roll her eyes again. "Okay, fine, that me and Sierra could come up with. Can't forget that she went out and bought one of those name books to help me out with driving you crazy."

"If that was your intent, then you have failed at it, because while it is a strange name, it now belongs to one of the lights in my life, and I cannot judge it without judging him as well." A couple of the people present made noises that showed they found the situation adorable, something he liked hearing. If they were on his side for all of that, there was no way that they'd disagree with what he was about to say: "However, due to the fact that I do not want there to be an even more outlandish name than Ryden or Trevin to precede the name of our family, I think that, regardless of what gender this new child may be, I will be the one to decide its name."

"And I think that just proves that I did drive you at least a bit crazy with those names." Giving him a smug smile of her own, Heather's attention then turned to the fact that they were supposed to have been enjoying a nice holiday meal, not having a giant argument about babies. So, in the only way she knew how, she made sure to put an end to it for the moment. "You know what? We'll settle this later. All of this. We'll have a day where all of us gather here again and we finish what we've started. Mostly which one of us is right, though, and we'll do it the same way we did it the first time."

Since she was saying it to get the meal back on track, there was no way to argue against it, and so it was decided that there would be no resolution until a later date—a way later date, at that, to mimic the first time they went through this disagreement. Was anyone pleased with that decision? Not a one. But it was seen as the best way to handle things, and it gave everyone time to mull their side over a bit more before the lines were dissolved and everyone had to accept reality. The lack of a solid resolution did lead to more fighting as the night went on, not on the same topic but due to the fact that people had a lot of fight in them because of what had transpired. What should have been a happy day of celebrating not just a holiday but the news of a new baby had turned into a day of fighting and animosity, and although it should have been one to be remembered for years to come, it was instead one everyone would like to forget.

Of course, there were always worse days and events to try and forget.

A/N: Okay, raise your hand if you saw all this coming. Now raise your other hand if you think you know where this is going. Put your hand down, because there's still two chapters to go and a lot is going to happen between now and the end. :)

Which brings me to a huge point I've got to share with y'all: unless I get my writing in gear, the last two chapters will be delayed a bit. Well, I'm about 75% sure there'll be an extra week gap between 7 and 8, but I don't know about between this one and 7. I'll try to get everything out on time, but it's crunch time in the semester for papers and whatnot, plus next week is a huge celebration week for me. :o So yeah, if nothing gets posted next Monday, that's why! Thanks for sticking around for this fic! :D