May 4th 2023

Chapter 124
We Feast Before the Day

They would say, about any number of situations, how they couldn't remember what it was like to experience said situations before they'd had children, and maybe that was more of a fancy than a truth in some if not most cases. They could say for instance that they didn't recall what Christmas was like before they'd had their daughters, both the eve and the day, and maybe it wouldn't be that they didn't remember those days so much as... they just could never be as remarkable as the ones that had come since Marianne had made them parents and her sisters had come along to increase that wealth. Christmas with the Friar girls was unforgettable.

Lucas had been determined, for the morning of the 24th, to kick things off with a big breakfast for the family, one which he would make. It wasn't as though he hadn't participated in any meal preparations since he'd come home from the hospital, but he was still healing in many ways and inevitably he would tire more easily, much to his frustration. He wanted to do more, but he also knew that he needed to pace himself, to not push himself too hard. He was doing better than he had at first, and he needed to remember that. In the meantime, he had ways of getting things done. In this case, his salvation came in the form of his forever partner in mischief, his wife. He'd pulled Maya in on his plan, and she'd been ready to dive in before he'd finished telling her half of it. When the morning of the eve would come, they would be good to go.

"You know, there is one thing I remember about these mornings, back when we didn't have a whole pack of daughters to consider," Maya quietly hummed as she and Lucas greeted one another, having only awakened a minute before.

"Yeah? What's that?" he asked her, curious, only to laugh as she gave him a look that was wholly self-explanatory and might have been described as 'less interruptions, more time in bed.' "It's a wonder none of them were born in September, with you looking at me like that."

"I can do a lot more than look," she whispered, leaning over to him as... They both paused at the same time, listened... "Is that..."

"The Chipmunk Song," Lucas confirmed in the same tone. They looked at each other in a shared bit of amused exasperation.

"Don't think this is over, Mister," Maya squinted at him.

"Counting on that," he breathed as they moved to get up.

Things may not have gone exactly as they would have wanted them to but, on the whole, they did very well, this thanks to the in-house aunts and uncle crew. Wyatt, Nellie, and Gracie all saw to their nieces, keeping them out of the kitchen while their parents saw to the breakfast preparations. They had a very easy angle to work from, what with it being the twins' first Christmas with them since they'd moved in. It almost felt like Wyatt's first one, too, with how distracted he'd been the year before at this time.

But most of all, it was Finneas Hart-Lane's very first Christmas ever in his young life. It was already wild to stop and think of how he was already half a year old. He definitely had something of his mother in him, but he was so much more like his father, and the more he'd grown, the more they had seen it become evident, as much in looks as in temperament. Did Wyatt still worry about doing right by his son and making sure he was getting everything he needed? Naturally. But he'd made it through the land of the unknown, and everyone who saw him could see that he'd grown into a very competent young father. He still struggled to balance home, school, and work, but none of that ever touched Finn. He was a happy little guy, and he loved his father as much as his father loved him, like there was no one else in the world that mattered so much as one another.

The activities that morning, while Maya and Lucas made breakfast, soon consisted of a Haley Hunter double feature, which had to be paused and later resumed once breakfast was ready and in need of consuming. They first watched Haley's first foray into appearing on screen, which was becoming a holiday classic for many others aside from the Friars, whether or not she was the reason for it. And once that had been done - with the obligatory three or four rewinds to watch her scenes again - the logical next step had to be to watch the new movie, the one she'd done this year, even if it had nothing to do with Christmas.

When this one had come out, everyone had been as proud as they had been the first time around, even as they were in awe, seeing their Haley up on that screen and doing as well as she did. It was something not unlike their thoughts of Christmas and other special occasions before and after they'd had children, only on another level, as they looked to the likes of Mackenzie and Aubrey, who only could recall their aunt as being someone who was in movies, who had no means of recalling a time when she had not been. To them, she was magical. To them, she was an inspiration.

After the movies were over, as they needed to prepare to head out and visit friends and family, they were still very much on some of their minds, and on the little sisters' most of all. They would go around, even as their parents tried to get them dressed, and pretend as though they were Haley. They both had their own interpretations of how that came off in their own minds, clearly, and to look how they both moved, it put further conviction in their parents of the activities they needed to be signed up for, sooner or later. For Mackenzie, it was gymnastics all the way, but for Aubrey, their little lucky one came off like a tiny ballerina in the making.

They were doing the rounds today, and the girls were excited because their Uncle Wy had put them on to the perspective that it was basically like having Christmas over and over, every time they'd go to a new place. Maya appreciated her brother's approach, knowing it would help to work around the parts where they would have to deal with the stops and starts of getting Lucas from one place to the next. It wasn't as though he never left the house, especially now, but it didn't change the fact that he tired easily, and this was going to take a lot out of him, the further on they went. They could have stayed home and hosted everyone, and their people would have understood, especially under such circumstances, but it had been his choice, and he stood by it. This was Christmas, this was… It was his mother's favorite holiday, and if he'd done his best to hold up her standards for it all along, this was what it had all led to. The Day was in someone else's hands, but this one was still enough in his, and this was as good of a way as any to make it Melinda-special.

"So, I didn't want to say anything earlier, in case I ruined your momentum or anything, but you were a trooper today," Maya declared with a smile after she'd helped Lucas from the minivan, into the house, and on to the couch. "Super Huckleberry Dad," she added, sitting next to him. She leaned in and kissed him, and she could just about feel his exhaustion as he kissed her back. They sat together quietly for a moment, allowing them to hear the giggles from upstairs. The girls had been seen into the house already, aided in getting ready for bed by Wyatt, Nellie, Gracie, Ella, and Taylor. The Munroe-Friars were spending the night at the house with them, the better to spend morning with them, too.

"Going to need a minute before I can get up there for good night kisses," Lucas breathed.

"Don't worry about it. I have a feeling it's going to take them a while to fall asleep as it is," Maya pointed out, which made him laugh some more. "If anyone's going to fall asleep right now, I think it might be you," she stared him down.

"What makes you say that? Is it the way my eyes are barely open right now?" he asked, gesturing vaguely at his own face.

"That'd be one of the reasons," she smirked, brushing at his hair.

"That's going to be another one if you keep it up," he mumbled.

"Do you want me to stop?" she asked.

"Not really, no," he replied.

"How about we all just pile up down here for tonight? Sleep under the tree lights, you know?"

"That should make things interesting for Santa," Lucas hummed.

"Magic, no worries," Maya shrugged. "They won't care about the why, and if it means making tonight memorable and tomorrow possible…" The thought of tomorrow, of what it would be, what they all wanted it to be, made him consider her suggestion as something more than the means to an end.

"Break out the sleeping bags, huh?" he looked at her, and she grinned, leaned to kiss him again before getting up to see to their Christmas 'camping' night. She was not quite to the basement door when her phone rang, and she stopped to look at it. When she gasped, Lucas turned to look at her. "What?" he asked, confused at her smile, more so as she held up a finger for him to wait and answered the call.

"Good evening, François," she started, and that got his attention, filled him in with those few words and those that followed, her switch to French as she spoke to the young man.

They'd had… not exactly a bet going so much as a curiosity. The more the days went by without Stella having her baby, the more they'd had to wonder if the moment would come before Christmas, or after, or even on the day itself. Marianne had it in mind that if the baby was born on the twenty-fifth, then the two of them would get to be holiday birthday buddies. Now with this call, late on Christmas Eve, the likelihood, depending on what Stella's husband had to tell them, was that the baby was either born on the twenty-fourth or would be born early on the twenty-fifth.

Maya smiled. She smiled so much that she started to cry. Stella's baby bird had been born to the eve. As he went on listening to her side of the conversation, Lucas was glad to hear that both mother and baby were doing great and had come through delivery as beautifully as they could hope to. Catching his wife's attention, Lucas signed a suggestion, and she nodded before sharing it. They would stop by the hospital the next morning for a visit if the new parents were up to it. François confirmed that they would be welcomed eagerly. Stella had asked him to let them know as much when he'd gone to call.

"Well?" Lucas asked after they'd hung up. She might just not have been told, but no, he was sure she'd gone out of her way not to let any information out, but she knew. She put her phone back in her pocket and started toward the basement again. "Hey, not fair," he quietly called after her, which made her chuckle. But she stopped, two steps down, and she turned again to stare back at him.

"It's a girl."

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners