April 12th 2024

Chapter 103
The Night For Ideas

To watch as Ezra and the girls crowded around Lucas while he set Colby and his car seat down and secured them in place, Maya had this image of guardian fairies around their young prince. No one was going to harm him while they were around, oh, no. It didn't matter that their father was an expert hand at this after having done the same for every last one of them over the years. This was their baby brother, and it was the first time they were all going out together, which was the biggest deal to them as it had been since they'd found out it would be happening just that morning at breakfast.

If she was honest, Maya would say that seeing them all close around Colby in this way was something she needed as they prepared to head out. She was never going to completely forget this notion that her babies were fragile, even as they grew and grew and were no longer babies, but here was the one of them who was still so new to the world, and she had never taken him anywhere up to now. The list of All The Things That Could Go Wrong was always in the back of her mind, but just now it was slipping left and right and making its way to the very forefront of her mind, so the levity of protective siblings helped to balance things out for her and allowed her to breathe.

Once they did take off driving up the road, with tiny Huck merrily surrounded by the cacophony of his siblings, and Lucas at the wheel with his gaze fully concentrated on the road and his ears tuned to all of them, Maya took it all in stride and came up with just the subject to bring them all together. Spring Break was coming up fast. She was already 'on break' from school, but then the kids would have theirs, so what were they all going to do about it?

Their youngest wouldn't have the same perspective of it, but between Marianne and the triplets, Spring Break was getting to be A Thing. They had summer vacation, sure, but that was because school was over until the start of the next grade, and they had the winter holidays, but that was… well, the holidays. This week off was a special treat, a blank slate of a week, an interruption from the day to day… It had so much potential for them and their fertile imaginations.

They were so excited to pull their little sisters into this, and Mackenzie and Aubrey were really starting to catch on now. Mostly, they liked the part where they would get to do fun things with their family, though this year they might have been even more excited at the prospect of spending days and days with their baby brother instead of having to leave him all day while they went to school. Ezra already got to do that, but now he would get his sisters back, and that was really all he could need, but he could see that everyone else was getting excited, and that was getting him so hyped up, his head ticking from one side to the other as he followed the words he heard from one and the next…

Maya and Lucas both let this burst continue on a while before they went ahead and pointed out that they would get nowhere if they didn't go one at a time. The kids would usually quiet down quick, and it was one of the things their parents would be most proud of, in watching them grow as a unit. They would have disagreements at times, sure, but on the whole they supported one another and loved one another so dearly that they wanted to hear from one another.

The part that they all quickly came to realize and accept was that this break would be made different for having their little brother as part of the picture. He was a tiny, tiny baby, as they reminded their parents, and both of them thanked them for doing so, doing their very best to keep a straight face and not let the hint of a smirk rise over them, no matter how much it really, really wanted to.

Marianne pointed out, before either of her parents had to say anything, that they shouldn't get caught up in any big ideas. They had to think about Colby. As far as they were concerned, it was his Spring Break, too, but he was just a tiny, little baby, and if he couldn't do what the rest of them did, then they shouldn't do it. Some of them had looks on their faces like they wished they could do some big thing, but they understood why they couldn't, so they needed a moment to think things all over again.

"But we can make it like we went somewhere, can't we?" Mackenzie spoke up first, sitting upright in her seat.

"Absolutely, Mackerel," Lucas told her, smiling. He knew as well as Maya did that, of all their children, she would have had exactly one thing in mind for this break. She was finally free to move, her leg was better, so she wanted to make the most of that, with all of them. If not for the Colby of it all, they knew the kind of thing she would have wanted to do, the places she would have wanted to go.

"Can we do something outside, like at Hallowannie?" she asked them, and as vague as the notion still was, her siblings could picture it in their heads, and they were on board. Mackenzie looked over to Marianne, and her big sister gave her a firm nod, a good and sound promise that they could sketch out something together. And for the rest of their trip out together that day, they would see the wheels turning in her head, a plan coming together.

The triplets would sit in the back of the minivan, the full seat allowing them to remain side by side, Lucy in between twins Kacey and Remy almost without any of them having to think about it. The two on the ends would turn toward their fellow triplets as much as they could, before they turned too much and their parents told them to straighten up.

With the brainstorm session going for their Spring Break plans, the three of them were their very own think tank, talking quietly amongst themselves. They wouldn't always need to speak in full sentences, and they would sometimes slip into some words and turns of phrase that had been their own creation, enough that people would have trouble keeping up with them.

Whether or not they could catch on to everything they were saying, they could at least catch the flow as far as where the conversation was going. Ideas were slipping here and there, some set aside, others given a maybe…

"Hey, butts, remember about the belts?" Maya called back to them when she caught a glimpse of them in the rearview mirror. There was some grumbling, but Kacey and Remy moved back to something closer to their starting positions. "So? Any stand outs?" Maya asked them, and they perked up at this, soon electing Lucy to give their top idea.

"We want to have a movie marathon," she told them.

"Yeah?" Lucas asked, the smile slipping into his voice enough to embolden his daughters as they went on.

"We could do it for a whole day, and in the night, too," Lucy told him.

"Do you think you'll be able to stay awake that long?" Lucas trailed off, letting them think about how well that was likely to go.

"We'll sleep a lot the night before," Kacey told him.

"We won't eat too much candy and crash," Remy vowed. Her sisters looked mildly unsure there. No candy with movies?

"Or we can have a nap in the middle," Lucy suggested.

"Like intermission," Maya grinned, and Lucas laughed.

While everyone was making their their suggestions, there was Ezra, quietly speaking with big sister Aubrey. Here again, their parents only needed to see the way they both sat and moved to take a guess at what they were getting at. Ezra was still figuring out what they were all doing, and Aubrey was always so happy to flex her big sister muscles, so she was explaining it all to him, giving him space to come up with something he might add to their plans.

"Balloons," he declared in a slow, contemplative voice. The others looked at him, at the way the idea made him smile, and they laughed.

"That's a great idea, EZ!" Aubrey held out her hand to him and he returned the high-five with glee. "Right?" she turned to their parents, hoping they would say yes.

"Who doesn't love balloons?" Maya told her, and once they confirmed to him that this meant 'yes,' Ezra was very happy that he had contributed.

"Can we do something for Aunt Nellie? For the baby?" Marianne finally chimed in, as they were nearing the mall's parking lot. She'd let her siblings give their ideas first, because that was just the way she would handle something like this, but at the same time she would go and explore her own ideas at times, allowing them to breathe and expand in her head before ever letting them out.

Right now, she would be well aware of how her mother's little sister was seeing the days disappear and draw her closer and closer to the one where her baby boy would be born and make her a mother, and as ready as she would be for that moment, the unknown was coming closer, and it manifested with fear. Her siblings had been doing their best to show her she would be just fine, so some added help from her nieces and nephews was more than welcome. They were all onboard as soon as Marianne suggested it, as they would be.

"Yeah, we can get her a balloon," she smiled when Ezra's hand shot up and he looked at her.

"The baby, too?" Yeah, he'd get one, too.

"You know what this is all starting to sound like to me?" Maya asked as they were getting the kids out, getting Colby in his stroller.

"Outdoor activities, movie marathon, balloons, and something for Nellie…" Lucas counted off, the various ideas provided by the children. "Yeah, I see it," he nodded.

They let the idea rest until later, focusing on their first family outing with Colby. Walking into their usual spots, they were impossible not to be remembered, even before they ever factored Maya's music career, or even her teaching career, as the city was populated more and more of her former students, or Lucas' position at the ranch, his new book, and everything in between. Now, finally, it was all of them plus the newest member of their family, and it felt a lot less like shopping, a lot more like an introduction tour.

But finally they made it back home, and as the kids dispersed and Maya settled in with Colby up in their room, Lucas joined her. He sat next to her and just rested for a few minutes. When Maya had gone to put the baby in his crib, she returned to sit and rest her head at his shoulder.

"So… Sleepster?" Lucas asked, and she smiled up at him. Sounds about right. "Are we talking the mega Sleepster over at SCAR house, or…"

"I think that might be a lot right now," she frowned to herself.

"How about in two parts then?" he offered. "Turtles here, and the siblings and niblings there." It made her laugh, the way he laid it out, and he caught her up in a good hug.

"Deal, deal, done!" she laughed on. "How many balloons are we talking about?"

"More than a few, not enough for the house to float away?"

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners