Trying not to laugh as I watched her glance around before placing them onto the tree, I turned and headed back to the house, then stopped. David had somehow already beaten me to it, and was still carrying one box while pointing to one he’d just set down.
“Perfect timing! Can you grab this one?”
“Are these the ones Mom just sent me to get back at the house?”
He rolled his eyes. “Grandma sent me to get them. They need to learn to communicate.”
I looked at the box at his feet. “You’re leaving me with the bigger box?”
“Hey, I hauled it out of the attic and down to the barn. Afraid you can’t handle it?”
“Shut up,” I said, lifting it without any issues.
Once we had the boxes at the right trees, I walked over to Vivianne. The entire barn smelled of pine, with all of the Douglas firs set up inside the arena. It was heated, which made it pleasant. Dad and Derek had built platforms for each tree to sit on, along with the wrapped presents, so they weren’t resting on the sandy arena floor.
“If you’re wondering about the cats and dogs, the kids at the elementary school made the decorations. They all got to vote on the themes of the trees. When cats and dogs won, my mother racked her brain trying to figure out where to buy cat and dog ornaments.”
She laughed. “Who thought of having the kids make them instead?”
“Mike did.”
She nodded. “Smart.”
“Yeah, it was a great idea.”
She placed another ornament on the tree. “There’s a huge store in Denver that is nothing but Christmas decorations.”
“Really?” I asked, placing a white and yellow cat decoration at the front of the tree.
“We should take a drive there sometime and see what they have. We might be able to find some cute decorations for your mom’s trees.”
“That would be fun.”
We worked in silence as we finished up the tree with a handmade cat tree topper that would most likely only make it one more year…and that was if it lasted throughthisyear.
Vivianne looked around the barn and smiled. “How many trees are there total?” she asked.
“Seven.”
She turned toward me and grinned. “That’s a lot of trees.”
“Seven is my mother’s favorite number, so she uses it in weird ways. Like, seven trees. But she probably needs that many. Last Christmas, each tree was packed with gifts.”
“That’s really nice that the community gets together like they do for this event.”
I nodded. “Yeah. It was a good idea Mom had.”
Vivianne started to walk toward another tree waiting to be decorated. “And this one?” she asked, pointing at the boxes.
“This one is the horse-themed tree.”
Rubbing her hands together, she asked, “Shall we?”
“Let’s dive in.”
I opened a box, and Vivianne reached in and lifted out a smaller white box. She smiled. “This one gets special packaging, I see.”
Laughing, I replied, “You’ll see why. It’s not usually stored in this box.”
