Page 62 of Merry Mayhem
We high-five just as the bells ring.
Muriel gulps her cup of eggnog like a champ.
Ashley gags on hers, which I sympathize with.
But Patty swallows hers no problem.
At the next station, I throw all three of my snowballs—made with a snow cone machine—and hit the bullseye on the target with two of them.
Sam only hit one bullseye.
But Thea hits all three.
My long legs are the only thing that puts me a few steps ahead of her.
Muriel wraps the odd-shaped baseball bat like a pro at station three, but so does Patty. Ashley struggles. She covers her poor paper wrapping with extra bows.Interestingly, Max pulls ahead at that station, wrapping the bat perfectly and pulling ahead of Muriel and Patty, getting to station four.
At station four, I dress the stuffed otter in the provided reindeer costume, including antlers, a Santa jacket, and little red and white booties, faster than Thea or Mitchell.
Sam and Thea finish at the same time I do, and again, I’m just slightly faster, getting to station five only two steps ahead of Thea.Mitchell beats us both by a step.
Thank God, Muriel is up on station five, where she has to play “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” on a xylophone. I never would have been able to pull that off. It seems that Muriel is the musical of the twins, because Patty hits a few sour notes. Ashley doesn’t even know where to start. She simply clinks random keys.Max is perfect note-wise, but not as fast as Muriel.
We’re barely ahead as Muriel sprint-walks to station six.
It’s the last station, and I’m ready. I pull three small gifts out of a stocking and have to unwrap them. That’s all fine. But then I have to figure out which judge each gift goes to.
Considering I don’t know these people at all, I’m stuck.
Every stocking has different gifts inside, so I can’t even watch the other participants.
I’m holding a lipstick—there are three female judges, and all are wearing lipstick this morning. I’ve also got a pack of double A batteries and a fancy chocolate bar.
A chocolate bar? Couldn’t that go to anyone? And batteries? Everyone in the world needs double-A batteries.
So, I guess.
I hand the lipstick to one of the women, the batteries go to Brewser. Just as I’m headed for Wilson with the chocolate bar, Mitchell comes up next to me and whispers, “Sally. The one in yellow.”
Then he’s off, distributing his gifts. But I decide to trust him and hand the chocolate to the woman in the yellow cardigan.
And that was the right match. I was also right about the batteries.Well, actually, it turns out that the gift would have been right no matter who I gave it to.In a fun twist, every team had one gift like that.
But my lipstick choice is wrong, and Thea, Mitchell, and Jesse have already distributed their gifts before I’m finished anyway.
Thea and Patty win.
Max and Mitchell are in second place, and Beckett and Sutton—whom I wasn’t even paying attention to—are third.
“We’ll kick their butts at the ornament hunt,” Muriel tells me.
“The what?”
“The next challenge,” she says. “It’s like an Easter egg hunt, but they’ll hide Christmas tree ornaments around the park. Whoever gathers the most wins.”
I grin. “Sounds good. See you this afternoon.”
“See ya.”
