UNEXPECTED

Chapter 42

A week later, all the Black Friday shopping madness had settled back down, school had started back up again, since Monday, to be exact, and Hannah's grandparents had safely arrived back home. Now, on a Saturday afternoon, Clay and his dad were busy going through some bins of Christmas lights. The father and son due had planned to get the outside of their house decorated today while Lainie worked a little to start getting the inside decorated. As the weather had gotten a little bit colder after Thanksgiving, Clay wore a pair or dark blue jeans, a buttoned up soft red and black plaid flannel shirt, a warm hoodie, and a pair of tennis shoes. Clay also sported his simple plain black beanie because of the semi winter-like wind that began to pick up just the slightest bit.

After spending some time checking all the strands of lights to make sure they worked, Matt briefly left to retrieve a ladder so that he and his son could easily get up on the roof to outline the edge of the rooftop with the christmas lights they had. When he came back, Matt set the ladder up so that it was leaning against the house. He and Clay then carefully climbed up the ladder with a few strands of whit Christmas lights, and the two worked together to begin lining the lights strand-by-strand along the edge of the roof and securing the lights in place. After a while, and after the roof was lined with lights, Clay and Matt then proceeded to line a strand or two of lights along the edge of the smaller section of roof that was above the window's that peered into Clay's upper level bedroom.

After the roof was finally done, Clay and Matt climbed down the ladder again and moved on to covering the small trees on either side of the porch steps with some multicolored Christmas lights, as well as the two bushes near the entrance gate. Taking turns, Matt and Clay passed the light strands to each other, wrapping the lights around the small tree-like bushes and moving up higher as they went. Once done with with covering the bushes with lights, Clay and Matt took a short break to step inside and warm up a little bit before heading back out into the cold weather again to finish their part in decorating the house.

Once Matt and Clay came back outside again to finish decorating the outside of the house, the father-son duo grabbed a few more stands of the multicolored lights, and they began lining the four windows with those lights. They first started with the three small rectangular windows on the right side of the house. Once done on that side, Clay and Matt moved to the larger window and worked together to line that window frame with the multicolored Christmas lights as well. Afterwards, Matt used a strand of white lights to run down the metal railings on the porch steps, and Clay took another strand of white lights to outline the front door. After finally being done with the light strands, Clay and Matt proceeded to line the small walkway with some decorative gingerbread men that lit up as well. As a finishing touch, a couple outdoor decorations were brought out. One was placed in the grass on the left side of the walkway. The decoration near the walkway was A reindeer pulling Santa in his sleigh, which was full of wrapped presents, and even a Christmas tree. The other outdoor decoration were six gigantic ornaments that were different colors with different patterns on them. Three of those giant ornaments were placed in the grass on one side of the porch steps, while the other three ornament decorations were placed on the other side of the steps.

Matt and Clay smiled at each other as they took a step back and admired all the work they had done together. "Now all that's left to do is the fun part." Matt exclaimed, reffering to waiting until dark to see what everything looked like when it was all lit up. Clay nodded his head in reply to his dad's statement. The 18-year-old couldn't wait until it got dark later, because he was already eager to see how good the ending result of their hard work looked. After packing up the small amount of light strands they didn't use, and after moving the boxes, bins, and ladder back to where they usually go, Clay and Matt headed back inside to the warm atmosphere of the now festive-looking Jensen home.