August 5th 2023

Chapter 221
Bells And All

It would take another week before they actually got started, but then Saturday morning rolled around, and when they woke up both Maya and Lucas had this feeling in them, this spark of something like magic that told them today was the day to launch operation Christmas. They got up, got the kids up, saw to breakfast, and then as they sat and ate together, that was when they told Ava, Elliott, Noah, and Jamie that they were going to start preparing for Christmas, all of them together, and they were going to make it their biggest one yet. Oh, were they ever intrigued. Then their mother broke out a notepad and pen, and they all sat up in their seats.

"Hey, Tadpole, what do you think we should do, huh?" Maya leaned down in her seat to get at eye level with him. Jamie wiggled in his chair, looked at his siblings, who all nodded at him. Go for it. He looked back to his mother and father, and the notepad…

"Ginger House!" he declared at once, extending his arms out to telegraph 'a big one.'

"You want a gingerbread house?" Maya asked him, and he gave a hearty nod. "Like, our house?" she asked, and he nodded even more. "You got it," she wrote it down, and he came hurrying around the table to have a look. He couldn't read, but he wanted to see anyway. "Anything else?" Maya asked him, and he blinked at her. "What is it?" she asked him.

"I want the… the…" he looked for the word, and his little hands moved around empty air. Maya gave him the pen and pulled him into her lap. The shaky drawing was in line with his skills, but knowing him, she understood. He'd been obsessed with the towered dessert since he'd seen it.

"Croquembouche," she slowly pronounced, and he repeated. "Got it," she told him. He hopped giddily like the little frog he was. "Bee, you're up," Maya turned to Noah, who instantly looked like he realized he should have been considering his options and now was scrambling to think of something.

"It's okay, take your time," Lucas told him. Noah sat up on his knees on his chair, thinking the question over.

"I like… I like when there's all the lights on the house, and… and it's so bright, with the colors, and with music, too," he gasped and blurted out in a stream that was most understandable to his parents and siblings and few others.

"Lots and lots of lights," Maya spoke as she wrote, and Noah moved over the table to look, too, nearly tipping his chair over in the process until his father caught him and pulled him back safely. They knew him enough to predict it now at least… most of the time. "Anything else?" Maya tried to keep her jolt under control. Noah shook his head. "Well if you think of something else, we'll add it later. Sprout?" she turned to Elliott.

"Can we get a big tree?" he asked. "So big it touches the ceiling," he indicated, and his brothers made impressed noises at the idea. "And decorations everywhere," he continued to mime. The other kids all liked the sound of that and they called out different kinds of things to put in that tree. Lights, of course, and ornaments, paper chains, and popcorn, bells, and all.

"That's going to be loaded," Lucas nodded.

"Yeah, it will," Maya agreed, after she'd written everything down. She looked at him, at the kids… "We could have more than one tree…" The boys looked at her as though the very concept was something they had never imagined to be possible. "Two… maybe three… We'll figure it out."

"One big one, and… and two not as big ones?" Elliott suggested, and Maya smiled. Yeah, that would be good. Lucas looked as though he was starting to grasp what she'd meant when she'd said she wanted this to be the most Christmas, and he didn't mind it. At this point, if it made her happy, he would fill their whole house with trees.

"Sweetpea?" she smiled to Ava, and Ava smiled back. She'd already been thinking it all over and had ideas at the ready.

"Can we go caroling?" she asked her parents. They looked at her with easy smiles all around. She was getting more and more at ease with singing, the more she and Maya had been working together. She got by well enough, and that seemed to be all that mattered to her by this point.

"Caroling," Maya wrote down. "We're going to need a list of songs… and we'll have to practice…" she went on taking notes.

"Outfits," Ava added quickly, and Maya nodded.

"Outfits…" She looked over to Lucas, and he knew she was imagining him in some kind of Victorian get-up. Whatever she saw, it amused her, and he was on board. He imagined her matching him, and he really wanted to see it. And then all the kids… "We're still doing the Christmas episode, right?" Ava looked at him, pulling him from his thoughts.

"You bet," he told her, and she smiled before pivoting over to Maya.

"Caroling in show," she added to her notes before being told. Ava beamed.

"Okay, you now," Noah got off his chair and approached the twins. The one-year-old boys looked to their big brothers, clueless. All they seemed to know was that everyone was excited about something and they were trying to keep up… somehow.

"They're going to like everything we're doing," Ava promised Noah. "But it'd be fun if they had their thing, too," she added, stopping on the point that would be impossible to remedy: they couldn't speak yet. "Oh, I know! I know!"

She went and went the laptop and brought it to sit on the table, where the boys could see. She pulled up a site, a page where her parents soon saw an array of different sets of PJs in various Christmas patterns.

"Guys, which one?" she pointed at the screen, repeated a few times. Whether or not they actually understood, Simon and Jack pointed together, and their 'choice' was noted.

"Your turn, Daddy?" Jamie tipped his head to Lucas, who played innocent and pointed to himself. The children nodded. Yes, him. "Oh, that's a big question, but… What would you guys say if we went skating?" he asked them, and he got many voices speaking over one another, all of them giving off a clear impression of 'yes, please.' Maya just smirked and wrote down 'skating.' "And then, when we all come home and we're tired, and kind of cold, you know what we could do? We make some hot chocolate, load it up with as many little marshmallows as we can fit," he told them, in a tone of voice that felt to Maya as though it came through directly from a memory in her husband's head, from one of his grandmothers, she suspected. "And we all sit on the living room floor… I've got some Christmas movies you guys haven't seen yet."

She wrote it all down, the skating, the loaded hot chocolates, the movies… The kids wanted to know which movies, and he started going through a list, which she diligently wrote down with the rest of the big plan. The way they were going, she suspected they'd be cracking into that list by the end of the day, even as they figured out the logistics of what they were promising to achieve. They might well need help, physically… financially… They never liked to go that route, but for this…

Catching on to a sudden silence around her, Maya looked up from her notes to find the others looking at her expectantly. She pointed the end of her pen at herself, eyebrows raised in question, and they nodded. It was her turn to say what she wanted. Lucas was looking at her maybe more than the kids, like he only wanted to make sure that she'd pick something, too, and wouldn't just let them do their thing. It was important that she got a say. She breathed, considered. She'd had some time to think about this since she'd first shared her hopes for the holidays with Lucas. A lot of what she'd been thinking about, they had already brought up, so it wasn't as though she hadn't thought of anything, right? But she had to come up with something else, something more…

"I want… as many people to be here for Christmas Day as we can fit," she said aloud as she thought it over, imagined it all. "Bit of potluck, but we'll make things, too… Dessert table," she turned a smile to Jamie, whose eyes went round just imagining it. "The biggest Secret Santa ever…"

"What's that?" Jamie asked, distracted from the words 'dessert table' all of a sudden.

"It's like a game, but with presents," Lucas quickly told him. "We'll tell you how it works later," he went on, and Maya resisted the urge to laugh. "Speaking of it though, I bet we could get Santa out here," Lucas told the kids, who reacted accordingly, in awe or in pretend awe, depending on if they believed. Maya hid her smirk as she kept writing. The list would grow throughout the day, but already by the end of that first 'meeting' they had something to work with, and they would get started right away. There was shopping to be done, lots of it, and until they could sort out everything and how they'd get it, they had a few places where they could begin.

From the start, from the moment they had become pregnant the first time, it had always been so important to them to be self-sufficient. They had received some help along the way, some things that couldn't be avoided, but the vast majority had been in their hands. This had required them to be generally… frugal. They knew what they needed, especially what their child (and soon children) would need, and that would come first. Over the years, their circumstances had changed, they'd improved… notably so… But they had never forgotten where they had started, how lucky they'd been for the breaks they'd gotten, their house most of all, and how they could have had it so much worse. The other side of this, naturally, was that there was still and perhaps would always be this part of them who would remember and, because of that, would never go on the assumption that they could never end up back there again someday. They were not big spenders, especially for their own benefits. They had reasons for their spending, more often than not.

Even here, there was for sure a part of that first shopping trip that was motivated with the promise that a lot of what they got this year would be used again in years to come, so it wasn't being thrown away. Better yet, it would mean memories. It would take them back to this wonderful Christmas they had cooked up together, and maybe… maybe it'd help them not dwell on what had happened weeks ago to their Sara.

They put in their part, but so did their families, and their friends, and there was no stopping any of them. That was alright though, right here… They were on a mission, all of them, and it was wonderful to see how the kids responded to their great errand, the hunt for the pieces of their holiday puzzle. They would spot something and start calling for everyone to see for themselves, like this was a game… There were really no losers that day, no counts kept… They were all just so excited to go from this step to the next one, and the next, each one a little closer to the big day.

Once they'd done that big bit of shopping, the next logical step was then to get on decorating. They went at it one spot at a time. They couldn't do all of it, no, not when they didn't even have their trees yet, but even without that they had so, so much to do. The first big one, which would for sure tick one wish box on their list, was the light display outside. They all knew exactly who to look to when it came to plotting out their light show. Leave it to Mommy, and they'd have something good enough to bring people driving up and down their lane just to see what they did. The kids all made suggestions, and they were written down, like at their big meeting, but what they didn't know yet was that their parents were going to do everything in their power to get that entire display completed without their knowing it, all so that, when it got dark again, they'd get to surprise them.

Already all the small things they'd done in preparation for their big Christmas had felt great, made them excited for what would come next, but the night of lights, now… It was one of those things they didn't just hope, they knew their kids would remember all their lives. If it could then go on and make them all smile, too, that would be even better. They had so much more ahead of them after this step, and each one they started next would keep the thrill going. They had icons on their calendar, showing what they would do next and when, and they would all look at the page every time they walked past it, their giddiness renewed all over again.

The next big thing for them went toward Ava's caroling wish, and here they had to look no further than Katy's people at the theater where she worked. If they all wanted to be fit for the part, then the costume department would be right there and eager to pitch in. They got some help there from Katy's sister and Maya's aunt, Charlie Olsen. She had grown and learned from her parents about plenty of things, not just baking. From her mother, she'd learned to sew, not just to patch up, take in, or take out, but to make clothes from scratch, and so with all that, she'd been able to work alongside the costume department to fabricate the whole line of costumes for the Friars on their caroling adventures.

"Mama, look!" Ava bolted out to show Maya, the first time she got to put on her dress, the first time, after all the alterations had been done. She spun around to show her all of it, and as beautiful as the dress was, the part that Maya couldn't get over was her daughter's smile and the bounce in her step.

"You love it, huh?" Maya asked, as though she even needed to.

"So much," Ava nodded. "It'll be even better when we do my curls to go with it," she considered aloud, and Maya agreed. "Wait until you see the boys," Ava told her with a knowing smirk before dipping back out of view. Lucas was back there now, helping them get dressed, she knew, and she could have been envious, but the big reveal 'show' simply made it worth it. Seeing one, two, and three of her sons jumping into view, it hit her right in the mom part of her heart, and then when their father carried out the twins… Oh, it was all going to be so wonderful, and none of them could wait.

Then there was the tree shopping, the tree hunt, as they went seeking their trio. There had been a lot of measuring happening back at the house, as Lucas had done his best to ensure that they knew exactly the dimensions they should and, most importantly, could fit in the spots they had picked out for their trees. The last thing they wanted was to come back, all excited, and then run into problems. Instead, they got to the lot, and the kids ran every which way – staying together at all times – while their parents followed with their little brothers in their strollers.

"Oh, there he goes, look at him go, guys!" Maya intoned, looking down to Simon and Jack, who both tipped their heads back to look at her. "The Great Huckleberry and his Magical Measuring Tape," she went on with a flourish, making them laugh while Lucas turned back to her, barely able to contain his own smirk as he looked to the thing in his hand. "No, please, carry on," she waved at him, and he extended the tape for show, getting an approving tip of the head from her.

The trees were eventually bought, and they all returned home with great anticipation bubbling inside them. The kids chanted 'trees, trees, trees' the whole way, which might have gotten insufferable after a while if not that their mother and father were as eager as they were to see the next part. And to everyone's great delight – and relief – the trees were just what they needed, within an inch here and an inch there, but then they'd factored in 'wiggle room' in their calculations, so they were good to move on to decorating.

Elliott was all over this. He'd wanted a tree that nearly touched the ceiling, and he got one, along with those two smaller ones. Everything that went on those trees came as much from what they already had and what they'd bought on their big shopping trip. Some of it had been made by hand, and some of it never made it on the tree, as they discovered the difficulties of creating popcorn garlands when everyone was hungry and could smell popcorn.

When they were all done, when they could step back and take in the effect of that trio of trees… Oh, it was impressive, so much more than what they had imagined in their heads. The kids just sort of sat there, staring up in quiet wonder, and it was one ore reason for their parents to smile. This was about all of them, for all of them, as a family, and the more they got into it, the happier they were that they had started doing all this. As though they hadn't already loved Christmas, now… Now they thought they might have loved it more than ever. They were starting to wonder about the sequel to their Great Christmas.

The closer they were getting to the big day, more pieces got to fall into place, and one of those biggest ones was the Christmas episode to Lucas and Ava's series. The whole family was going to be part of that one, and not just Lucas and Maya and the children, but Lucas' parents, and his grandparents, and Maya's parents, stepparents, siblings by blood or none…

Lucas and Ava were the great minds behind the entire production, of course, as they always had been, though of course Ava had wanted to involve her little brothers, and she had also gotten to sit and contribute with her mother once again on a bit of holiday-themed music for the episode. How could they not? The whole thing wouldn't air until closer to Christmas, but until then it got to feel like they were skipping ahead a little and have a pre-Christmas together, all of them as a family. The caroling costumes got to have their day in the spotlight, along with their set of songs as they'd been preparing it, and so many other little touches of the things they had set down on their wish list. They took a trip to the skating rink for part of the shoot, and they got to go out on their skates, some of them clearly for the very first time. By the end of their time on the ice, everyone was going around like they never wanted to not have skates on their feet ever again.

"I can't wait until we get to see it all together," Ava beamed as she came back from getting a look at some of the footage they'd captured. "I mean I will… but only because I have to," she informed her father, who gave a slow nod of understanding as he smiled at her.

Her patience was well rewarded by air night, and then before they knew it, Christmas Eve was upon them. A great frenzy settled on the Friar house as that morning came, as much for knowing what day it was as for what they knew would be happening for them on that day. They had all these great plans for the following day, the day, at the house, but before all that, they were heading to Sullivan Stables for their great party, the staff, their families, some of the riders and theirs, too… The Friars broke out their costumes again, treating everyone to their carols, and they were such a hit that Juliet declared them 'booked' for the next year already, and any following year where they'd so grace them with their presence.

Once they were done with their performance, it would have made sense for everyone to get changed again into the clothes they'd worn coming in, but they had already learned about the kids and their attachment to their 'singing clothes,' and soon they gave up trying to get them out of those. If anything, it made it impossible for them to do anything except stay dressed up in their costumes, too. It turned the entire afternoon and early evening into a game just for the two of them, where they invented characters for themselves and embodied those characters whenever they had the chance, which was to say whenever they were on their own, even if it was for no more than half a minute.

Eventually, it was time to head home, and they had a lot less trouble convincing their sons and daughter of doing so than they might have feared. It helped that half of them were already asleep, but still. More than anything, they were now looking forward to heading home, to their wonderfully magical home, so they could go to sleep and wait for the morning and all that that would bring.

"They're not going to remember, are they?" Elliott quietly asked as he and Noah looked on while their parents saw to getting Jamie, Simon, and Jack changed for bed while they slept, completely clueless. When his mom and dad looked at him, he indicated the twins. "They're too little."

"I mean… we can't know for sure," Lucas told him. Not all of it, no, but maybe some of it… impressions, yeah? I'm sure there are things you guys remember from when you were that small and you don't even realize it."

"Little like them?" Noah asked, like that was the wildest thing he'd ever heard.

"Oh, yeah," Maya laughed. The Bee gave her a look like he still couldn't believe what she claimed. "Believe me, they're not as little as they used to be," she hummed. She'd gotten them both changed while Lucas saw to Jamie, and she could still see them so well the way they'd been, when they'd first been handed over to her… So much had happened since then, a whole year and then some… so much… "Alright," Maya breathed out, knowing Lucas would be looking at her now. "Let's get you changed, too."

"No!" Noah ran off at once, both hands on his hat and leaving his big brother to immediately follow him at pace.

"See, this is not going to work, and you want to know why?" Maya looked back to Lucas.

"You know where they live?" he guessed, brought to smile.

"They won't get away from me for long. I've got lullabies and everything, so they're toast."

All three beds in the Star Wars room soon had one sleeping blond boy in it, and all that remained for the waking crowd were Maya, Lucas, and Ava, as they set off to stage Santa's visit. That had been one of Ava's wishes for the night, though she'd of course waited to say so until after her believing brothers were out of earshot. She was so happy to help them put out the presents, and go through the offerings to Santa and the reindeer along with her parents once they were done. They put on a movie and settled on the couch together, knowing full well that, at least in Ava's case, they wouldn't make it to the end of the movie. They kept her with them after she'd gone to sleep, nestled between the two of them, and it was just the ending they could have asked for, on this eve. They finally brought her down to her room after the movie, and they went up to bed together, awaiting the rise of their big morning and the mad rush of small boys eager to discover what Santa had brought them.

The first boys to make themselves heard on Christmas morning may not exactly have known what was waiting for them downstairs, but they sounded excited enough, standing up in their cribs, that it made their parents laugh, officially giving themselves up for being awake, too. They went and scooped up the twins, or Lucas did, bringing them both back in either arm, the better to plop them on to the mattress where they could crawl to their mother in eager strides.

"Merry Christmas, fellas…" Maya pulled them close, their little bodies fitting so snuggly in her arms, and kissed each one on the head, once, and another time, and again, back and forth.

They were not alone for long, as a flash of auburn moving past their door alerted them to their daughter's presence away from her room. A few seconds later, there were the voices of a Sprout, a Bee, and a Tadpole, building until it was probably a good thing that the four of them in the master bedroom were awake. They all ended up together before long, eight of them in the room and so many wishes for a Merry Christmas flying around that it got just a bit confusing to remember who had said what to who and who hadn't said their wishes to who. This all turned into a lengthy exercise of everyone turning to someone else and saying the words like they figured they'd finally gotten everything sorted out. The longer it went on, some of them could barely keep a straight face anymore, and others started to find it funny for that, too. Finally, it became less about not knowing who had been told what and a lot more about how everyone was laughing, and this only made them laugh more. There were several red faces by the time they agreed it was time to head down to breakfast.

"Oh, Santa!" Jamie blurted out, like he was just remembering that He'd Visited.

With that, there was a rush of feet headed for the stairs. Maya and Lucas barely had time to take up one twin each and follow if they didn't want to miss much. Normally they would try and have breakfast before presents, but this was a special year, and this felt like the kind of tradition they could flip on its head. So, they did the presents first. They still did their best not to have it all happen in a rush that would last two seconds, and at least on that they didn't have to worry. The 'side effect' of their décor this year was that even now, after having it all like this for a while, the kids would be in awe, and they'd get distracted by this thing they saw, and then that one… and that one… They'd practically have to be reminded that they had more presents to unwrap, but then as soon as that would be achieved, they would fall upon the wrapping paper like they had claws for hands.

"Hey… My parents are on their way," Lucas stepped back into their room, as they had moved past presents, and breakfast, and the baking of the great Croquembouche to accompany Jamie's great gingerbread house, to get ready for their guests' imminent arrivals. He found his wife standing before the mirror, looking at herself, and he didn't need to be a mind reader to know what was going through her mind just then. He'd seen that look in her eyes too many times now. "Hey…" he stepped up behind her, into view, and she blinked, took a breath, and turned to face him.

"It's fine, I just…" she shook her head. "We were doing so well and then… I don't know… It caught me out of nowhere."

"Tell me about it," he invited, putting his arms around her. She thought for a moment, and a small quiver showed itself in her features.

"I was thinking about Christmas, when we were going to have Elliott, and telling everyone about him, about us getting engaged… and then I thought about… Sara…" She would still have been months away from the end of that pregnancy, if it hadn't ended already, but they would have had a whole other kind of merry Christmas for knowing that she'd be coming in the new year to follow. She didn't regret their Great Christmas, not a second of it, but she had to admit to herself and to Lucas that it had all been born out of a need not to sink into this space in her head, and now she was afraid she would ruin it all on this day of all days.

"She's with us," Lucas quietly promised, pressing a kiss to her forehead. Maya closed her eyes. "This is her Christmas, too."

"Yeah," Maya agreed, sniffling. She looked up, and he leaned in to kiss her. They had too many reasons to bask in this day not to give it all the happiness that it deserved, that they all deserved, together. So they finished getting ready, and off they went.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners