Math & Cupcakes

Early Wednesday morning, Linnea, her hair pulled back in disheveled pigtails, and Puck, were sitting together cozily on the leather couch, working on math problems. Puck madly punched at buttons on Linnea’s drill calculator, while Linnea read him word problems. Finally, Puck thought he had enough, and tried to excuse himself.
“Bye! Bye!” he said.
But Linnea soon re-interested him in the subject.
This was followed with trains constructed of upside-down kitchen benches filled with pillows.
Rose showed off her new tea thermos, which she had purchased in advance for work.
“I’m going to bring one of my plants for my desk too,” she said.
She started her job on Monday at eight o’clock.
Meanwhile, Linnea had finally put together her blinky bug from the kit that Joe had given her for her birthday. And Carrie was helping Francis put together his airplane model, also from his birthday, after he had cleaned the entire house by himself until 11:30 the previous night.
Later, Carrie pulled a few dance moves with Puck.
“Do you dip?” Carrie asked.
Puck giggled as she flew him backwards.
“Plump up those kissing cushions!” she demanded, as Puck’s squishy cheeks turned pink from all the kisses. “You are violating all the cuteness codes, simultaneously.”
Then they made red velvet cupcakes and listened to “Weird Al”.
While Puck napped under Francis’ and Linnea’s attentive care, Collette and Carrie met up with Rose at the mall for several purchases. A new fluttery purple and white top for Rose from Charlotte Russe’s, a bright red trench coat with black buttons from H&M and a tan braided waist belt and mottled black and gray loose-fitting sweater from Forever 21 for Carrie-Bri, and a pocketbook Reykjavik guidebook for Collette.
“If you’re going to Reykjavik, have a good time,” said the checker with a smile.
She thanked him, although she wasn’t completely certain that it would happen just yet.
By the time they all returned to the house, Joe was at the kitchen table with his usual box of design tools, cutting dark red paper against pale blue, into curves for a layered print, with a razor.
Francis, Linnea, and Puck were ready to run around outside and built a small fire in the backyard. Puck was allowed to run in his bare piggies through the wintry grass, as suddenly everything had become like late spring. He had a very good afternoon doing so.
That evening, OLeif and Collette shared a bottle of Welch’s sparkling white grape juice, one of Collette’s favorites.