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Basically, they look like they belong on a yacht, while I a a T-shirt that says, "EVE WAS FRAMED"

"It was a surprise!" Ellie says brightly, and Alexander flashesabout Ellie and Alexander They spend sopublic people that sometimes they act that way in private, too, so it canthe world’s s roo into the roo a pair of khaki shorts that started their life as pants, a few stray strings hanging down to his bony knees El’s forehead creases a bit as she looks over his graying hair, which is pulled back into a ponytail, and the paint that’s splattered all over his Pink Floyd T-shirt Dad fancies hiood at it But he gave up ood for hi that keeps him busy

And for all that Ellie is clearly not impressed with Dad’s appearance, he’s kind of the reason she even ive you the Star Magazine treatment

"10 THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT ELLIE WINTERS (OR, MORE ACCURATELY, HER FAMILY!)"

1) Ellie’s dad, Lia to Liam, that’s the worst ah for anyone to reh to ruin your life

2) Liam was in a band called Velvet! It was every bit as eelled hair and skinny suits than his daughter Daisy would like to talk about

3) Velvet had exactly ONE HIT SONG, "Harbor Me," and while that title sounds pretty sweet, "harbor" is being used in a metaphorical sense, and the video was banned in seven countries The less we say about it, the better

4) Their second song only went to 22 ("Staying the Night," less gross than "Harbor Me" but ay too many references to sheets and skin for anyone’s comfort), and the third never even cracked the top 100 ("Daisy Chain," surprisingly not offensive, but also not listenable)

5) By that point, Liam had a flat in London he couldn’t afford, a fancy car he’d crashed twice, and a pretty significant drug problem It was all very Behind the Music!

6) He e in the Midlands, where he started working at his father’s garden supply shop, only to meet a lovely journalist by the na for some hip London newspaper and came all the way out to little Glockenshire-on-the-Vale to interview Lia absolutely no one who has seen a romantic comedy, the two fell in love and moved to Florida for a fresh start Luckily for Liaot picked up for a car cowriter on that track (a fact that fills his family with equal parts pride and mortification!) he became, as they say, "well off!"

8) It was this stroke of luck that allowed the Winterses to send their oldest daughter, Eleanor, off to the UK for university, and it was there that the blond girl with the shiny hair and teeth met the heir to the Scottish throne!

9) Ellie--as she’s known to friends and fa for nearly two years now,her thesince her dad was on the cover of NME, and her er sister, Daisy, works at a grocery store and just got a killer dye job, clearlyher the real baller of the Winters fa?" I ask The last tiether was Christmas, and it had kind of been a disaster Alexander had needed to sleep on our pullout sofa, whichbed he had back in Scotland (even though he’d spent the entire ti that he was fine, and that the sofa bed was "surprisingly co innovation"), and then iven Ellie a plastic tiara as a joke, which e in her roo the table to whether Alexander would be offended if we ordered pizza--our Christmas Eve tradition--and thenin to drink eggnog with us on Christmas Day, which made everyone so uncomfortable that in the end, we all sat there in total silence, Malcolm and David in their black suits, El and Alexander dressed like they were going to church, and me, Mom, and Dad all in our pajamas, Dad with a stray bit of tinsel tucked into his ponytail

To be honest, after all that, I wasn’t surprised Ellie and Alexander had decided on a "surprise" visit The less time my parents had to stress and think up neays to be weird, respectively, the better