Christmas Time meant kids at home for almost a month, and in Ashley Woods, a gated community near the local academy, a burst of Christmas decorations appear all around. The only reason of this is a healthy prize to the winning house is presented at the community Christmas Dinner. Children put small Christmas trees even inside their bedrooms by windows. Gardeners hang string by string of lights, waiting their Christmas Break away from their rich employers. Pets are put outisde in ridiculous Christmas costumes. None can match the Moores.
Because of their true love of the holiday, the Moore family never loses. With the smell of fresh pastry always wafting from the mansion, and the dozens of lights put up by the ever faithful gardeners, they're hard to miss. Snow falls into the freshly cut bushes and sticks onto white pillars of the old house like a loyal friend coming back for the season.
Inside the partially famous residence, maids, the few Edward hired before this death, scuttle around readying themselves for a well deserved Christmas Break. One leaves a little Christmas note on the door, and they all shuffle out the door without a second glance.
While all the bedrooms are filled with sleeping Moores, the other are not. The office is idle, not one child finishing a last project inside. The lounge is empty, the bartender with legendary virgin Pina Coladas home with his wife and new child. The backyard is even deserted, the pool covered for the winter season and large field desperate for the two baseball boys. The forest the kids often hike through or across fallen tree bridges was only active when the occasional squirrel passed by. In the spring, one room will be empty.
But the kitchen still has a Christmas feel.
In the kitchen, cookies from the night before have settled on racks, spoons laying in the sinks with bits of icing still stuck on. Flashbacks of the night included a bunch of cookie stealing, a brotherly icing fight, two baths, and four showers from a very fun and sweet cookie fight. Eddie has complained about sprinkles in his hair, and some got icing all in her hair.
One blonde-haired boy slunk into the kitchen, stealing a cookie off the rack and pouring some milk into his favorite penguin-shaped cup he got for his last Christmas with his dad. He tore off a chunk, savoring the tase. "Perfection." His long hair was straight, but raggedy all around with his bangs in his face. His red plaid pyjamas stuck to his legs from a night of little sleep and his grey wife-beater hung off his slightly muscular frame. Eddie took off another chunk, suprised when he saw Jake's car in the front of the house. "Is Jake here?" He mumbled to himself, not bothering to leave his stool at the bar counter.