Gifted Connections 4

I laughed. Christmas should be fun.

Chapter 5

“When do you plan to leave?” Will asked as he rinsed some vegetables in the sink.

For Christmas Eve, only breakfast had been served, and lunch meats, cheeses, bread, and chips would be available all day long. For Christmas, just lunch was going to be served. We were now running on a skeleton staff, but lucky for Drake, there had been plenty of volunteers willing to work in the kitchens for both days with the promise of additional pay.

A lot of the operatives and trainers had gone home for the holidays. It was the only time of year Paul ran a skeleton staff. Everyone knew they were on call, but they didn’t care if they had the opportunity to visit their families, even if it was for a little while.

Since the kitchens weren’t going to be used in their usual capacity, we decided to utilize them. Will had still cleared the use of the kitchens with Paul, despite the fact he was technically in charge. We just had too many dishes to prepare for our army, and we didn’t want to have to cook it in three different kitchens. Our new kitchen was more substantial than our old one had been. It worked for our immediate family. It just wasn’t going to work to accommodate the additional dishes we planned on making.

“In three days,” Jace answered Will while helping Alex place cookies on a baking sheet.

It was basically all-hands-on-deck today. Everyone wanted to enjoy the downtime together. Sierra was using Drake’s recipes to mix the cookie batters with the assistance of Kade. Jace and Noah were helping the younger kids put them on the baking sheets and into the oven. Drake was preparing the prime rib, stuffing, and ham. Jaxson and I were making the macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes. Pops and Remy were in charge of vegetables. Megan was making her famous butter rolls (at least that was what I was told, I had never had them).

“I’ll like to get there early to meet with Leo and the team. We also have no appropriate clothing for the parties or the weather there,” Troy stated as he walked past with the dishes we were no longer using. He volunteered to help clean up after us, along with Rachel.

“Don’t let Jemmy hear you’re going shopping without her,” Rachel joked as she wiped the counter Drake had been using. “She’s still sulking that you won’t let her go.”

“You didn’t hear anything.” Remy gave her a pointed look.

“Hear what?” Rachel asked with feigned cluelessness. She had once harbored a massive crush on Remy.

Remy chuckled. “Exactly.”

“We’ll bring her back a souvenir,” I joked as I placed our pans of macaroni and cheese into the oven.

“Am I going to get a souvenir?” Ella yelled out hopefully.

“Me too?” Alex cried out loudly.

“You guys are going to be spoiled enough,” I ribbed them with a smile, although I had every intention of finding one of those cheesy souvenir shops and getting them something small.

“Aww,” Ella whined as Alex shrugged and said okay.

“We have thirty-five more minutes on the prime rib and ham. How’s everything else looking?” Drake asked as checked on his stuffing.

“Forty-five on the mac and cheese,” I stated as I looked up at the clock. “That should give the meat time to rest.?

?

“We have about twenty more minutes left to complete all these cookies,” Jace stated as he put some more cookies on the cooling racks.

Sierra and Kade were now carefully placing some of the cooled off cookies into Christmas tins.

“I think we have enough to hand out to the whole compound,” Kade joked as he set aside another tin without closing it.

“That’s the plan,” Drake said with a smile. “We’ll see how much is left after tonight and have some for the kids to snack on the next couple of days. The rest gets handed out tomorrow.”

“Can we deliver them?” Alex surprised me by asking him. I fully expected him to complain about sharing the cookies after asking about them nonstop this morning.

“You do realize that we have left Jemmy and Dawn to stuff the stockings, right?” Rachel said as she grabbed a dirty bowl from one of the prep tables.

“Is that your way of stating that you realized the mistake of volunteering to do the cleanup?” I teased as I peeled the potatoes for the mashed potatoes.

“Uh… yeah,” she gave me a ‘duh’ look.

We laughed.