First mate's log:

December 22, 1973

Well, Mary Ann and I planned to tell our friends about the baby this week, but the Bradys are gone! Not for good, but they took a sudden trip for the holidays. Mr. Brady is designing an addition to an amusement park in Florida. The park is paying for the whole family to fly out there and back, and stay at a local hotel.

Peter told me that's why he won't be able to work too much at the Pizza Parlor over Christmas vacation. I of course didn't mention that we need him because Mary Ann is going to have a baby. She hasn't had to cut back on work yet, and obviously he'll be back before she has to.

I was surprised when he said that he wished I could go, since it was fun when I went with them to the Grand Canyon. I was flattered and said, "Well, thanks, but, um, things have changed."

He laughed, nodded, and glanced over at Mary Ann. He's too young to understand marriage, but he is interested in girls, so maybe he can understand a little of how I feel. And I'll tell him, his parents, and his brothers and his sisters about the baby after they all get back on Saturday.

Carol Brady's diary:

December 25, 1973

The family is in Florida for the holidays! Well, it's another business trip where we all, Alice included, get to go along, but we're having a wonderful time. As with the Grand Canyon trip, Mike didn't tell any of us, even me, about it much ahead of time. He wanted to surprise us all. I know Mike may seem serious and "square" on the surface, but he also has a spontaneous side. He would've whisked us off to the airport as soon as the kids got out of school on Friday, but he understood that we all had to make arrangements.

For instance, both Peter and Jan have, or had, jobs that they'd planned to be at over vacation, to earn some more money. Mary Ann has been very good and understanding about giving Peter a flexible work schedule, including during the time Peter was working for Bobby without pay.

But Mr. Driscoll told Jan that the ice cream business slows down in the winter. (I know, we live in the tropics, but these islands are mostly populated by people from colder climates, who just never got in the winter ice cream habit.) So she's laid off until the spring.

She's disappointed of course, but she's trying to be positive about it. For instance, the girls have been taking dance lessons off and on for the last few years at Miss Clairette's dance studio on Blenford. Marcia got back into them after she left Driscoll's. Jan would like to start taking lessons again after we get back from Florida.

Mike is designing an expansion to an amusement park. No, not Disney World or any place I've heard of before. It's called Orange Kingdom, because of the local fruit and because it ties in with the children's show Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana? The park has mascots based on the talking animals on that show, but the rides sound like generic amusement park rides.

The kids don't care, since any amusement park sounds good to them. I know, if we hadn't moved to our little island, they'd be near Disneyland and all those parks. And, yes, there's no need for a Jungle Ride when we don't live far from a jungle. But we definitely don't have roller coasters anywhere near us.

We haven't gone on any rides yet, since it took us a few days to get here. We took the ferry over on Saturday, so that we wouldn't have to dock the boat on Blenford for a week. Then we flew from Blenford to Honolulu. Because of the holidays and the short notice, we weren't able to get a direct flight to Orlando, and definitely not that day and for nine people.

Sunday we flew to Los Angeles. We stayed overnight in a hotel that the amusement park company (OK Corp.) will also reimburse Mike for. Then we flew out of LAX at noon, local time. So we got to Orlando in the evening, by East Coast time. Then we had to take a bus to the Orange Kingdom, which is an hour out of Orlando.

So even the kids were too jet-lagged and tired to go to the park last night. Mike got up very early to finalize his sketches and blueprints. So I'm stealing this time to catch you up a little. We're going to open presents (which, yes, we had to throw into the quick packing) when he gets back and before breakfast. And then we'll go to the park when it opens. Except for Mike, who has to get ready for his afternoon presentation, but he'll try to join us for lunch.

We can explore through Friday though, so there's plenty of time to see everything. We fly out on Saturday, directly to Honolulu, and then to Blenford, so we hope to be home by that evening.

December 28, 1973

Mary Ann and I had our first Christmas as a married couple, and yeah, our last before we become parents. We gave each other big boxes of chocolates! She's hungrier now of course, and I'm always hungry. When the Professor heard about these gifts, he said it was the opposite of O'Henry, I guess like the candy bars.

Yeah, we told him, and all our other friends who went to the Howells' for a Christmas dinner. It wasn't one of the big dinner parties like they usually throw these days. It was just fifteen people counting them. There were the seven castaways other than the Bradys and Alice, plus the Hinkley boys, Thurston Howell IV, Kurt the Jungle Boy (who these days is kind of a hippie, living in the jungle but sometimes visiting civilization), the Skipper's girlfriend Joyce, Sam the Butcher (since he's kind of at loose ends with his own girlfriend gone), and Lord Beasley Waterford, since he's separated from the Baroness of Blenford.

(Mary Ann has heard a rumor, I think from Ginger, that the baroness is dating some former jock named Tank Gates, but I don't know if that's true.)

Anyway, Mary Ann had wanted to just tell our news to one or two people at a time. But then folks started talking about the first Christmas on the island, a story the non-castaways had never heard. We talked about how the Skipper dressed up as Santa and then it seemed like the real Santa was there, too.

Mrs. Howell said, "The dear Brady children were so small then. I miss having wee ones running around like that."

No one pointed out that the Hinkley boys are only eight, since it's not like they live on this island. I think we knew what she meant. It was just different when the sixteen of us castaways were like an extended family.

Then I blurted out, "Well, next Christmas there'll be a baby at this table."

Everyone stared at me, and I realized I made it sound like we'd be eating a baby, instead of a ham that Sam sold and that the Howells' French chef baked.

Then Ginger squealed, "Mary Ann, are you—?"

My wife blushed, nodded, and smiled. Everyone shook our hands or hugged us. And Mrs. Howell said she felt like she was going to be a great-aunt. I don't know how that made Thurston Howell IV feel, but he's still kind of young to have a family.

The Skipper had happy tears in his eyes as he murmured, "My Little Buddy is gonna be a little daddy!" But he, Mr. Howell, and even the Professor teased me about the time Mrs. Howell matchmade me with Mary Ann. (I thought Ginger had a crush on me, but I was so naive then.)

I guess we are all still a family in a way, but yeah, it'll be different when Mary Ann and I are a little family with our baby.

December 31, 1973

Even though it's Monday and the kids will be back in school on Wednesday, we're all still in Florida! We're staying a few days longer, at company expense. But there was a a point when Mike thought he would have to pay for the whole trip.

After opening presents, we all headed over to the park, which looked very festive and yet tropical. (But, yes, the Florida tropics are very different than the tropics I've grown used to in the past nine and a half years.) I warned Bobby and Cindy not to fill up on junk food and instead save room for lunch, but of course they forgot about that. We explored the park in pairs: the two of them, Greg and Peter, Marcia and Jan, and Alice and I. Mike of course had to work.

He did join us for lunch, but if he hadn't, well. Jan bought a poster of David Cassidy, because she's a big Partridge Family fan, and he did a guest appearance last year on OYGIDSB. Unfortunately, the poster shop just sells posters with rubber bands around them. Jan was worried that her poster would be crushed, especially during all the travel. She convinced Mike to give up one of the cylinders that he had his plans and blueprints in. He put all his work into one tube.

Well, you can probably guess what happened. I should've seen it coming, but I was too distracted by my youngest two not having any appetite. And Mike was trying to be a good father, even though he hadn't been able to spend much time with the family that day.

The tubes got switched, without anyone noticing until Mike was at his presentation. He was very embarrassed, but also worried. Not only this job, but his whole reputation was riding on this meeting. Yes, Mr. Howell will always find Mike new projects, but my husband wants to have some independence. If word got out that Mike had shown up to an important meeting with a pop star's portrait, he'd never live it down.

The OK executives had to leave for the airport in half an hour! They don't live in Florida either. They had come down from New York City, yes, on Christmas Day. It was the only time they could get away. Mike promised he would find the right cylinder and bring it to them.

However, it wasn't easy finding Jan even in a not yet expanded amusement park. And when he did, she was on the way back to the poster shop, because she'd left his cylinder on one of the rides! She didn't know which one, because she and Marcia had been on a lot of rides, and they didn't notice immediately.

Mike was able to gather everyone together by paging them, and then we set out in pairs to scour the park, although this time Alice was on her own because I paired up with Mike. Well, until he had to go back to the conference center to wait for the right cylinder and see if he could stall the executives.

Jan herself found the cylinder, in a canoe, as she told us later. We got it to Mike in sort of a relay. I was the last one and I arrived just as the executives were about to depart. They promised to look over the plans on the plane.

That wasn't just talk. They called Mike that evening and said they loved his designs. And, yes, they're paying for us to stay longer. So we've all definitely been on all the rides now, even Mike. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm ready to go home.

And, yes, it's New Year's Eve now. I don't really have any resolutions, other than to treasure the moments I have with all of my children, before Greg graduates and possibly leaves the nest.