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After putting Chase’s collaged box on the mantel for everyone to ad back into the box of Christrin grew even wider
Ryan, one of her twoseasons of soccer, basketball, baseball and football Mary reet an ornament out of him unless she specifically asked him to make one By then he was nine years old and believed he was too old to make Christmas ornaments, especially since his little twin sisters loved any excuse to be covered in glitter fro
More than one Christuest over the years had been confused as to why Mary had hung a stick on her tree…at least until she told thereed to make was a stick But it wasn’t just any old stick At her request, Ryan had walked out into their backyard, kicking a rock with each step, gru to himself since he would havea soccer ball with his brothers Mary surreptitiously watched hi oak tree and picked up the stick to bring inside along with a few pine needles, she wondered what he planned to do with it
Ryan chose a pen fro stash in the farace that extended froan to draw on the branch When he was donehis illustrations, he stuck several pine needles into holes on either side of the stick
A few minutes later Ryan walked back into the kitchen, where Mary was peeling potatoes for dinner, and showed her what he’d , but it was unique And fun Just like her easygoing son Most people never saw beyond Ryan’s athletic talents, but Mary had always known he was bright and funny and quite artistic, as well Now, as a grown ue Baseball pitcher
Afterhis reindeer so that it wouldn’t blend in with the rest of the branches on the tree, Mary reached back into the box and drew out the next ornament
Her other middle son, Zach, had always been a practical joker Froly beautiful boy that he could get aith anything siirls in his class under his spell, his teachers wound around his little finger and the other boys cla to be his friend Now he ran a chain of auto repair shops throughout California and raced cars in his spare time
One Christerbread cookies and had left thee one of the little ones who had fallen off their tricycle in the backyard That hen one of the kids snuck into the kitchen and took a bite out of each cookie
How could she do anything but laugh when she returned to the kitchen? None of the kids would fess up to the Christmas crime but, come Christmas Eve, when Zach announced he had one ingerbread men with a bite taken out of him Zach had coated the cookie in a thick layer of rubber cement so it wouldn’t fall apart and had pushed a paperclip through the center of its forehead to use as a er
Life with her kids had never been dull, that was for sure, she thought with a chuckle as she hung the fun ornament on the tree And she wouldn’t have traded a ether in the ranch house in Palo Alto for anything in the world
The next set of ornaments was also in its very own box and Mary est son Gabe had always been intrigued by fire, so it was fitting that he’d becoht hoested they try to blow solass ornaments by hand Mary had loved the way Jack had told the history of the first-ever Christ that they had been made just like this
Mary re side by side, focused intently on the job at hand She recalled how Jack took absolute care to et hurt, just as he always had with all of his children and her, as well
The resulting slass ornaments were lopsided and i them on the tree now and every year
When Mary returned to the box and pulled out a large ball wrapped in pink paper that rattled in her hands, she knew exactly whose this was Lori--aka "Naughty"--was one of her twin girls Mary and Jack had already had six boys, ere h to keep them busy from sunup to sundown, but that didn’t stop both of the the ornao when Jack had realized Mary was pregnant again The house was still quiet--an a and rare feat with so many rowdy kids Jack woke her with his sinfully sweet love, and, oh, how she’d loved those sleepy h her in gentle waves
She had alain in his arms, when she heard Gabe call out from his bedroom down the hall Only two years old, he was the earliest riser in the house, especially when he was hungry And as a little firefighter in training, he was always hungry
She was just clientle arm around her waist His dark eyes were full of so much love it stopped her breath