Yes. I need you to tell me what you were going to say to me before Rosie showed up. I need to know if I imagined that you wanted to kiss me.
Even if Rosie wasn’t standing there, Sarah wouldn’t have said the words out loud, but oh, how she wished she knew the answers.
To cover her wayward thoughts, she glanced at her watch. “It is about time we head toward the church.”
The ornament hunt was held a block over from the square at the church’s playground.
From inside the community room, Sarah, Bodie, and a couple of other volunteers gathered bags of prize-stuffed plastic ornaments and headed to the playground to “hide” them.
Bodie had attached Harry’s leash to a fence post and the dog barked when he spotted them.
“I hate that he’s tied up,” Sarah mused as they began hiding ornaments around the playground.
“Better that than him finding the ornaments and demolishing them before your kids have a chance to hunt them.”
“He might think he was in the greatest game of Christmas Fetch ever.” Sarah smiled at the image of Harry happily hunting the ornaments.
Bodie chuckled. “Possibly. Either way, Harry and all these ball-shaped ornaments wouldn’t be a good combination.”
She didn’t think Harry would make any trouble, but it probably was better to leave him on his leash and tied to the fence.
Sarah “hid” an ornament on each swing seat. Bodie paused from where he was tucking one into a patch of higher grass at one of the swing frame’s legs.
“You’re sure it’s okay that we’re just putting most of them in plain sight? Isn’t the objective to hunt for the ornaments?”
“We want this to be easy and fun for all ages.”
He didn’t look convinced. “Won’t the older kids grab up all the ornaments in the open rather than leaving them for the younger kids?”
Placing ornaments on the slide’s steps, Sarah shook her head. “We start by letting the two-year-olds in first. Then, thirty seconds later, the three-year-olds. Thirty seconds
after that, the four-year-olds go in and so forth up to the ten-year-old cut-off age. It’s a little chaotic, I guess, but it gives the younger kids the opportunity to find the easy ones first.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“It worked well last year and will hopefully do so again this year.” Sarah tucked an ornament up beneath the end of the slide. “Mainly, our goal is for the kids to have a great time.”
“How many kids will hunt?”
“Last year, we had around seventy. We’re hoping to break a hundred this year.”
Sarah glanced around at the playground, looking for barren areas to put the rest of their ornaments. Red, gold, green, and silver plastic ornaments were visible wherever one looked. She smiled. The kids were going to have so much fun.
Bodie mused, “There’s ornaments everywhere.”
“Two thousand or so.”
He whistled. “That’s a lot of candy-stuffed plastic.”
“Not all of them have candy. I told you some have gift cards to local business and a few other small prizes.”
“Which leaves a lot filled with candy,” he reiterated, grinning. “It wasn’t a local dentist who sponsored this event, was it?”
A hundred and four children had arrived to hunt ornaments. Sarah was over the moon. Bodie had stepped back, moving to where he had Harry tied, so he wouldn’t be in the way and could hang out with the dog.
And observe Sarah.
Watching her with the other church volunteers, the kids, and the people from her community was seeing her in her element. He hoped after she opened the bed and breakfast that she would be able to continue her work with the church. Her deep love for it shined through in all she did.