Deciding that it was high turn to treat his wife, Josh quickly got dressed and went downstairs to prepare breakfast. Amelia was the next to come downstairs, wearing jeans and a Christmas sweater with a Scandinavian-style pattern on it, and she helped him set the table in the kitchen and put out the fruit and cereal ready for when Samantha and Laura made it downstairs.

“I guess I should go find one of my Christmas sweaters?” Josh chuckled, seeing how his wife and daughter were dressed.

“Way ahead of you!” Laura grinned, revealing that she was holding one behind her back which she tossed to him to put on. The five of them then sat down for breakfast and the girls shared more stories about the previous day’s fair, repeating some that they had told the previous evening with extra details.

“Did you download the photos yet?” Amelia asked as she and Josh cleared away the plates and bowls after breakfast. Grinning, Josh fetched his tablet and looked for the two emails with the download links for the two sets of Santa photos. Laura was pleased to see the first set with the girls in their cute Christmas outfits, pictures that she could easily imagine getting printed to hang in the living room and suspected Amelia’s family would want to do similar, but it was the pictures where they were naked apart from their wrist-band tickets and head gear that the girls really wanted to see!

“See, Mummy!” Samantha grinned when they got to the shot of her hugging Santa, leaning forward and tuned into him so that the stamp on her rump was clearly visible. “We got the shot you asked Daddy for! Are you going to get it printed?”

“I think I have to!” Laura chuckled. “I’ll be getting another of those photo books printed up with all the pictures of your big day but I’ll put these in too, and the stills I managed to grab from Daddy’s video of your grading! It will be your whole journey to the table!”

“And into your bellies!” Samantha giggled. “Sounds great, Mummy! Can we make a slide-show to put on the screen too?”

“Of course!” Laura smiled. “And weren’t you going to put together a couple of play-lists for the party?”

“Oh yeah!” Samantha grinned. “Maybe Amelia can help me with that later?” Her friend readily agreed and the family, including their honorary member, got ready to go to the cinema. The movie was fun, Christmassy and warm-hearted without being too cheesy, leaving them all with a happy feeling inside by the end. Although the girls had both seemed to eat their bodyweight in popcorn and other snacks during the movie, and Josh had recalled with fond jealousy the days when he would have happily enjoyed one of the bucket-size cups of cola which nowadays would have resulted in him spending half the movie’s runtime in the toilet, they both declared that they were hungry and ready for lunch when Laura asked if they wanted to go straight there or look around some shops first.

Chuckling, Laura drove them to the recently opened Canadian diner they had been wanting to try for a while and told the girls they could order whatever they wanted. Samantha went for pancakes with bacon, sausages and maple syrup while Amelia also chose bacon and sausage but with hash browns and scrambled eggs, which Josh certainly considered a far more understandable combination. Both parents ordered all day breakfast muffins with coffee and soon all four were happily tucking in, discussing the plans for the coming week.

Due to Christmas falling on a Monday that year, the schools would not break up until Friday but since the last week of school was also the last week of Samantha’s life, with only a little wheedling and prodding from her, it was agreed that the rules about “school nights” could be relaxed. Really there would be no consequences if Samantha were to skip the last week of school and certainly nobody would have thought less of her for doing so but, since the last week before Christmas tended to be mostly fun and Christmassy activities, with all the serious projects having been wrapped up the week before, she was keen to keep going and enjoy these last days with her friends.

It had already been agreed that Amelia would join Samantha and Josh for their trip to the butcher on the Saturday before Christmas but that she would be spending most of the coming week with her parents since they would be away for Christmas itself. They would drop her off around lunch time on Christmas Eve, which was the Sunday, so that she could help to decorate the hall for the party then she, along with Amanda and Rob, would sleep over that night. Like most of the guests, she would be joining the slumber party in the hall on Christmas night.

“That’s a point!” Laura observed as she sipped her coffee, watching the girls finishing off their substantial lunches which, Samantha delighted in reminding her parents, were an investment since they were helping her and Amelia to fatten for their respective harvests. “We should go and check out the camping store, see if they’ve got any bargains on sleeping bags and blow-up mattresses. They can’t be best-sellers in the middle of winter after all!”

“Didn’t we ask everyone to bring their own?” Josh asked with a slight chuckle, knowing that there was no real point in arguing with his wife once she had got this kind of idea into her head. “Why do we need to buy more?”

“We did, but I want to make sure we have spares!” she reminded him. “Not everyone will have their own after all and I don’t really know what state ours are in after being in the loft and the shed for goodness knows how long! Let’s just go and take a look, eh?” Although he could not help rolling his eyes a little, Josh agreed and the group left the diner to drive the short distance to the retail park which included a big camping and outdoor activity store.

“Hey look!” Amelia exclaimed once they were inside, running towards the barbecue and smoker section. “They have girl-spits!” The foam mannequin of a naked girl around her age that was mounted on the display model left no ambiguity about the device’s intended purpose.

“You’re going to look much prettier than her!” Josh assured her, putting his arm around her shoulders and kissing the top of her head.

“Daddy and Amelia, sitting in a tree,” Samantha sang teasingly. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

“Oh leave them alone!” Laura chuckled. “Or no more spankings for you!” Samantha giggled at the idea of a spanking being withheld rather than administered as a threatened punishment. “Although I’ve heard what effect girl-meat is supposed to have on people, especially other girls! Maybe we should get them their own little tent for the corner of the hall?”

“Nah!” Samantha giggled again. “If people are in the mood, remember there’s no rules between Christmas and New Year! Everyone can do what they want!”

“How do you figure that?” Laura asked, tilting her head curiously.

“Well,” Samantha explained with a grin, “whenever you visit Santa, he asks if you’ve been good this year! But he visits on Christmas Eve so from Christmas Day to New Year’s Eve you can do what you like and it’s okay!”

“Can’t argue with your logic there!” Laura chuckled. “But may I remind you all that we came to look at camp beds?”


To be continued...