Page 56 of Merry Mayhem
He grins. “Great.” He looks across the table to the twins. “I have an idea. You up for trying something?”
“We have nothing to lose,” one says, gesturing at the mess in front of them.
“Exactly,” Josh says happily. “Start frosting the round cookies with white frosting. As quickly as you can.” He looks at me. “Us too.”
I laugh. “Okay.”
“We’re making snowballs,” Josh says. “So they don’t have to be perfectly round either.” He pinches the edge of the cookie in front of him, making the edge jagged.
The boys are grinning, and I love the fact that he wanted to help the boys through this and turn their frustration into fun.
We quickly start frosting round cookies, completely white, and then, with Josh’s instruction, dabbing the tops of them with multiple little white balls. The boys enjoy even crushing a few.
Then, as the timer ticks down, we scatter the cookies between us.
“Time!” Nora calls out happily.
Everyone steps away from the table, and we grin at the twins, who look like they've been let in on a big secret.
“Okay, judges, see what you think,” Nora says.
Wilson, Brewser, and a couple of ladies from the city council start walking up and down the table. When they get to us, all eyebrows rise.
“This looks like you had a food fight,” Brewser says.
“Kind of,” one of the twins says. “Joint venture. The theme is snowball fight.”
The crumbs in between us look very much like scattered snow, the round white cookies clearly represent snowballs, and we each have an “arsenal” piled up in front of us. All of the judges chuckle.
“Creative,” Brewser says.
“I’ve never seen two teams work together to create something,” one of the women, Susan, says.
I can’t tell by the way she says it if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
They continue down the table, and we share a conspiratorial smile with the boys.
It doesn’t really matter who gets these points. We had a good time. And I got to stand smashed up against Josh’s side. I can think of worse ways to spend my early morning hours.
And better ways.
Like smashed up against Josh without all these clothes between us and without an audience.
Stop it. You’re going to get in so much trouble.
After checking out all of the cookie decorating and huddling for a couple of minutes, the judges stand up and face us. “We’re ready to award the points,” they tell Nora.
“Excellent,” she says, standing by the enormous whiteboard she’ll be using to keep track of our scores over the next couple of days.
“This challenge was worth twenty-five points,” Wilson says. “We have to admit that Jesse and Brad have the prettiest cookies decorated.”
Jesse and Brad give little whoops and high-fives.
“But,” Brewser adds. “We are only giving them fifteen of the points. We want to give Thea and Josh five points and Max and Mitchell five points, too. We appreciated the teamwork and creativity.”
Jesse and Brad are less happy now, but Max and Mitchell look like Brewser just told them they get to take all the cookies home with them, too.
“Um…” Nora stands with her whiteboard marker, poised. “I guess we never said all the points need to go to one team,” she finally decides with a shrug. “Great!”
