I hate Christmas shopping. It was around December 13th when Patrick had nothing scheduled for the week. Since Thanksgiving, he'd been up and down with interviews and other stuff. Elisa decided it was a great time to go shopping.

"Well, there's great sales right now,"she said as she looked through stacks of papers that advertised diffrent stores and their sales. Another fact about Elisa is that she could find a deal anywhere. "Macy has a 20% off all kids clothes. I need to get some stuff for Bronx and for my nephews."

So, a little after after school, we all piled into the car and drove to the nearest department store. Elisa said she was going to go to the kid's clothes and I decided to follow Patrick to the women's section. He was going to buy his mom a gift and I decided to tag along and use him to buy Elisa's gift.

"Patrick, I need you to help me buy Elisa her present. I don't know what to buy her, and I'm guessing you're the best one to ask."

Patrick nodded and said, "How much money do you have?" I thought of all the money I had saved, all the extra chores I took on, and the times I had decided not to go with my friends to the mall or diner.

"I got $40 for her gift. What's a good gift to get her with $40?"

He thought for a moment and started walking around the clothing racks. He finally stopped at a stack of dresses and looked at some. "Black or blue?" He asked.

"Blue?"

"Yeah, I thought that too."

For the unfashionable Patrick that we knew, he actually chose a really good dress, long sleeve thay showed a little chest and legs but not too much. "Nice, now I buy it and how do I hide it?" Patrick thought for a moment. 

"Well, we'll buy it right now, and I'll go and put it in the car, behind those waterbottles that we have in the trunk."

So we waited like ten minutes in line to buy the dress and then Patrick ran out and hid it in the trunk. He came back and we continued our search for a gift for Patrick's mom. I hadn't meet her yet, surprisingly, but I'd meet her some time next year or at least that's what Patrick told me.

Elisa showed up with stuff for her nephews, siblings, mother, Bronx, and Marie. The line took longer that time, like twenty minutes, and then we left the department shop and entered the mall.

We practically got all our Christmas shopping done there, excluding Andy's and Logan's gifts. Patrick agreeed to let me buy them (my friends from the orphanage) presents and then we would send it to them. Isn't he an awesome dad?

As we walked back to the car, I volunteered to put the bags in the back in fear of her finding the bag. She didn't suspect a thing, I think.

When we got home, I began arranging Elisa's gift. I put it in a nice bag and hid it in my closet. I just needed to make her stay out of the closet, and everything would be fine.

The next day we went to buy our Christmas tree! We choose an average size one that intoxicated the air with the scent of pine. We placed it on top of our little car and wrapped it with rope and we all excitedly went back home. But, of couse, we went home listening to Christmas songs because like  it's Christmas, man, it's like the number one thing to do in Christmas season.

When we got home and Patrick put up the tree, I asked, "Where are the ornaments?" And Elisa squealed and went upstairs. I looked at Patrick confused and he smiled with a wink. I heard things being moved upstairs and I wondered what she was doing.

She came down with a box of ornaments, red, gold, and silver, with a beautiful tree topper shaped as a star. "I have these from last year because I love them so much, I can't get rid of them," she said. She grabbed a red sphere with a golden strip and put it on a branch. Patrick put on Christmas songs while we worked on decorating the tree with glass ornaments.

When we finished, Elisa stepped back and looked at the tree. "It's missing something," she said and snapped her fingers and went back upstairs.

"What's she getting now?" I asked while Frosty The Snowman played. He shrugged once more and I sighed.

She came down with the another box this one filled with tinsel and ribbons. "Woah," I said looking at all the tinsel. She handed me the end of one and we wrapped it around the tree, while Patrick placed the ribbons on the tree.

"And now for the star," she said and handed me the pretty golden star. "I want you to put on the star." I felt honored beyond the natural. I was going to put the star on the Christmas tree for the first time in like eight years. I grabbed a chair and stood on it to put on the star. When I did, they cheered and we all looked at our work finally accomplished.

The next Friday, Patrick was doing a performance in Las Vegas, so he left for the weekend. I saw my chance and took it. When I got back from school (which was the last day and was the beginning of a three week vacation) , I jumped into the front seat of Elisa's car and said, "I need help with Patrick's present." She looked and me with a raised eyebrow. "See, I don't know where or what to buy Patrick and I need a ride to wherever I'm going to his present. Wanna help me?" I smiled hopefully. 

"Hmm, Guitar Center is the place to go," she said and started the car. We drove for like twenty minutes until we got to Guitar Center. It was pretty big and when we entered it took my breath away. There were instruments and other equipment. Sure, I'd seen instruments before and all their equipment, but it seemed amazying that there were so many instruments all together and that st a price they could easily be yours.

"Okay, what do I buy Patrick?" I asked.

"He needs some new strings for his acoustic guitar. " She went looking around and finally chose one. "Yeah, these are the ones he wants. Go pay for them, I'm going to look around."

I waited in line to pay when the guitar picks caught my eye. I wanted to get Patrick a guitar pick. Not just any guitar pick, but a customized one. The cashier was a young women with a tattoo on her left arm. Her hair was in a pixie cut and she looked well punk rock. She was nice though.

"Hello, did you find everything you were looking for?" I nodded, a little shy.  She smiled and said, "Shy, aren't we? That will be $18.25." I handed her the money.

"Um, do you knoe where I can get customized guiatr picks?" Her eyes lit up.

"I know this guy who has a company that makes customized guitar picks. Here, let me write down the website and his number. Tell him Kelly sent you, and he'll give you a good deal. Hey, you look familiar. " I shrugged.

"Well, here's your guitar strings, may I ask who they're for?"

"My dad."

"He plays guitar?"

"Yep."

"Hmm. Well, have good day."

"You, too."

Elisa was near the door and she saw me looking at my receipt where the website and phone number were. "What?"

"I wanna get Patrick a customized guitar pick and the lady at the cashier gave me the name of company that sells them, she knows the owner who can give me a discount. "

"That's good, want me to call them?"

"No thank you, I'll call them. But I may need to use your credit card, I'll pay don't worry, or have you drive me to pick it up. "

I grabbed my phone and called them. I placed my order and the guy gave me the guitar pick for $30. Pretty cheap, really. Elisa smiled when she heard how I wanted the guitar pick to be. I'd have to pick up the pick at their store on Sunday.

I wrapped Patrick's presents that night and tucked them in the closet. Elisa said she'd take me to the post offices to deliver the packages of gifts for Jessica, Logan, and Stacy. Btw, Stacy and David were hitting it off. I was kinda approving, but kinda disapproving. A young hot lead singer who goes on tour where the main group of fans are young women or girls should not be trusted. Was it love or a phase? I shrugged and decided to think of it later.

The days leading up to Christmas Eve went down like this: wake up, breakfast, clean, Christmas movies, lunch, Christmas specials, dinner, internet, and sleep.  There was snow,of course, but even i got bored of it on the second day and just found it plain annoying by the third day. But finally, Christmas eve came along.

I woke up to a lot of noise. I decided to take a long warm shower and dried my hair because it was super cold. I put on a band shirt, Nirvana, that was long sleeved and sweat pants.  When I left my room, Tyson and one of the pugs were wearing reindeer antlers and the solitary pug was wearing a jingle bell. I couldn't even take how cute tey were and ent insde my room to get their treats. I gave each of them a bone and went downstairs.

Elisa was doing last minute wrapping of presents and Patrick was mking breakfast. And by that, I mean he was serving us cereal. I entered the kitchen and said, "Good morning, father, why has thou chosen to prepare use the magnificent meal labeled as cerel?" He stared at me for a moment try to tell if I was joking or not. He shrugged.

"I felt like it?" He asked instead of answering.

"Good answer," I said and sat down next to my bowl of cereal.

"Elisa! Come eat, sweetie, you can finish that later," he said.

"I'm almost finished! Just need to tape this and . . .  Done!" She came inside the kitchen and sat down next to a bowl of cereal. "I can just relax the rest of the day and deliver the presents tommorow." She took a bite from her cereal.

Surprisingly, we didn't do much that day. We just kinda went on as if it was any other day until around five when I heard Patrick yell from the kitchen, "Cora, you wanna help us make cookies?" I ran down fhe stairs in no time with hands washed and apron ready. Oh, and yes, I own an apron because one of the things about living with the Stumps is that you cook often.

I saw the dough on the table and Elisa was rolling out the dough flat. "You can make cut outs with the shape thingys, I forgot the name of them," Patrick said and handed me a snowman cut out.

I started cutting out the snowmans while Elisa worked on reindeers. Patrick was chatting about the time he decided to bake on his own. "So I had to bake fifty cookies, so that was like two platters of cookies. It was late afternoon and my mom told me to keep an eye on the time. But I was like 'Hey, how about I play some guitar?' And the cookies ended up burning. I tried baking some more after that and . . . I burned those, too. I gave up and the next day I just bought the cookies for the class," Patrick letting his head slump in shame.

I was in disbelief, but Elisa seemed to belive it. "Yeah, he's not the best at baking."

"We should start a bakery, Elisa," I said and Elisa nodded , agreeing.

"We would have to have more practice for that, Cora," Elisa said.

Luckily, we didn't burn these cookies. We decorated them terribly, and ate a few. But Elisa didn't let me finish them all. "We have to save some for santa," she said and put them under the Christmas tree. "And you didn't even write a list of things you want for Christmas." I put on a dorky smile and tried my best to express my feelings.

"Uh, guys, I-I don't believe in santa anymore," I said, scratching the back of my neck.

"What? What do you mean you don't belive in santa? Santa is real, and we're sure you're on the nice list," Patrick said.

"Yes, now off we go, we need to get our sleep, so santa can get here early," Elisa said rushing us upstairs to our room. I just laughed, trying my best to understand.

Surprisingly, I did fall asleep early. When I woke up in my amazing footie pajamas, Christmas footie pajamas, I laid in bed, hoping I didn't have to wake up. It was really cold and I would've killed to be back in California where 50° felt like we were in Alaska. Fifty degrees here felt like summer.

But, eventually, Patrick burst into my room and said, "It's Christmas, wake up!" I groaned, but couldn't keep the smile off my face.

"Cora, come downstairs, look at the presents santa left!" Elisa yelled, probably from downstairs.

"I don't wanna! I wanna sleep til the afternoon!"

"Young lady, I'm gonna count to three, and if you're not out of bed by three, you're grounded. One, two, and -"

"Alright, I'm up, I'm up."

I went downstairs and saw ten presents under the Christmas tree.

"Oh look, santa ate the Christmas cookies, I hope he enjoyed them," o saod sarcastically, eyeing Patrick and Elisa.

"Oh, he probably did," they would not back down. They stuck to the whole 'santa' thing for the rest of their lives.

I opened my first present to reveal tickets for Disneyland. I was excited because I'd never been to Disneyland. I mostly just got cool knick knacks, cool little toy trains and snow globes. But the thought counted.

"Now that you opened all you're gifts from santa," I groaned and Patrick continued, "Let's go deliver all our presents."

Elisa's eyes widened. "Wait, we have more presents!" She gave me a pointed look and I ran upstairs to get their presents. I grabbed Elisa's present, and Patrick's. I went back downstairs to see Patrick wearing a santa hat, and so was Elisa. He handed me an elf hat.

"Alright, this one is for you, and this one is for you. Open them," I said and waited anxiously to see their reaction. Elisa opened hers first and she gasped when she saw it.

"Oh my gosh, it's beautiful. Thank you," she hugged me.

"Well, I can't take all the credit. Patrick helped." She smiled at him.

Patrick looked in his bag to find the strings, "Sweet! I needed these," and then he found the guitar pick. It was a simple white one with a black heart and I love you - C . He stared at it for a moment, as if in shock, and then smiled. "Thank you, I really like it."

I smiled and stood up. "Wait like five minutes, I can't go delivering presents in my footie pajamas!" I ran upstairs to change into a cute pair of jeans and a white t-shirt.

I came down and saw Patrick and Elisa loading the gifts into the car. I started to help and in no time we were finished. We drove first to Pete's where Bronx greeted us happily, well not us, mostly his present. "Thank you! It's a big moster truck!!" He stared in amazement at the moster truck, it was like ten inches tall. Pete got his expensive cologne, which he decided to test on Bronx.

With a "Merry Christmas!" we were off to Andy's (he didn't believe in God but he was fine with us giving him a present) to deliver his extraordinary vegan cook book. "Ahh, I'm dying to make these leek and corn stuffed peepers," he said looking through his cook book. "Happy random Wednesday!" I said as we drove off. He waved with a smile.

We drove to Elisa's relatives houses to deliver presents. Patrick and I stayed in the car while she quickly said hello and gave them the presents and a hug. From what I could see from the car, all her nephews were toddlers.

Patrick's family was all in different parts of Chicago, so he just shipped them out a week before. Lastly, we were going to Angel and Jaime's house to deliver their presents. I texted them I'm outside your house with your present get your ass out here before I freeze and when I arrived they were outside. 

"I've been waiting for you! I think frost bite got . . . . Wait what was I saying? Where's my present?" Angel said and I hugged her. I handed her wrapped present and waved, while I entered my car. "Merry Christmas!" She said, this time loud so everyone could hear.

"Merry Christmas!" My family responded. 

When we got to Jaime, she was pissed in a friendly matter. "You bitch, I can't feel my toes. I should've waited inside. Okay, Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal." She hugged me and I handed her her present. She shook it near her ear and said, "I guess it's a kitten by the sound of that." I laughed and waved.

When we got home, we were freezing. Elisa started making hot chocolate while Patrick and I grabbed blankets to cuddle on the couch. Elisa brought three mugs of hot chocolate to the coffee table and we started watching How The Grinch Stole Christmas. 

It was a pretty calm Christmas for a pretty chaotic year. Christmas movies and Christmas stories were all exchanged. Though it may seem like a boring Christmas, to me it was amazing. Spending time with Patrick and Elisa, my parents, was all I could ask for.

AUTHORS NOTE: MERRY CHRISTMAS!! Well, it's Christmas eve when I'm going to post this, but you get the feeling. Ah, I felt so tired of holidays, I want them to be over. The holidays, not the vacation, because I like vacation. Well, love you, please vote or comment or share or whatever, keep reading por favor.