Chapter 1
Once upon a time, a long time ago, when I was a little girl, my adventure began. It was a cold December night, and I was snuggled up in bed, trying hard to go to sleep, but I couldn’t because I was too excited about Christmas. My brother and sister were asleep in their beds next to me. Our dog was asleep on the rug by my bed. My parents, of course, were sleeping in their bedroom.
As I lay there, looking out the window, a moonbeam came right down through my window and made a circle of light in the middle of our bedroom floor. I was just looking at it, and I heard a noise. Blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blink. I looked at that moonbeam, where the noise seemed to be coming from, and there seemed to be a figure tumbling down it. Blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, plonk. Right in the middle of that circle of light, there stood a little elf.
He brushed himself off and he said, “My name is Timothy. I’ve come to take you and your brother and your sister up to the North Pole to see Santa’s workshops.” I couldn’t believe it. He was dressed all in red. He looked like an elf. He had a red cap with a pom-pom and a red shirt and red trousers and little tiny red shoes that turned up at the end with a white pom-pom.
He said, “Come on, hurry up. Get your brother and sister out of bed. We don’t have much time.” I woke them up. “Sister, brother, Timothy’s here. We’re going to the North Pole.” And they were rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. They didn’t know what I was talking about. And when they looked over and saw Timothy, they leapt out of bed.
He said to us, “Put your robe and slippers on, children. I don’t want you to get cold at the North Pole.” And so we did, as fast as we could. And then he said, “Come now in the circle of the moonbeam.” “How will we get to the–” “Shh,” he said. “Just listen and I’ll tell you what to do.”
“Can we bring our dog?” “Yes,” he said. “Now listen, you hold my hand.” And he held out his hand, and I grabbed his hand, which was very warm. And a faint smell of chocolate sort of surrounded us. He said, “Now you grab your brother’s hand. Brother, grab sister’s hand. Sister, let the dog grab your robe.” And we did that. And he said, “Everyone in the circle.”
And poof! Before we knew it. Plunkety, plunkety, plunkety, plunkety, blinkety, blinkety, blinkety, blinkety, blinkety, blink. We were going up the moonbeam. We got to the top in no time. And we looked down one side. We could see our little house. We looked down the other side. We could see–well, it looked like the North Pole. There were little, little tiny houses with twinkling lights. And we could see smoke from their chimneys. And the moonbeam on that side went right into the middle of the path by those houses.
Timothy said, “Hold on tight now. This is going to be fun.” And we held on. And we jumped and plunkety, plunkety, plunkety, plunkety, plunkety. But then I looked back. I saw my sister and the dog going down a different moonbeam. She had let go of my brother’s hand!
And still we went plinkety, plinkety, plinkety, plinkety, plinkety, plinkety, plunk. We landed on a snowy path. We stood up and brushed ourselves off. It was fun! We weren’t even cold. And that smell of chocolate–oh, it was delicious.
But I was worried about my little sister. You see, I was the oldest. And I had to take care of her. “Timothy, where is–” he just smiled at me and pointed. And from the other direction, down the path, came little sister, trotting with the dog. “Hey, I had so much fun. You should try that moonbeam next time.” I was about to scold her. And Timothy said, “Shh,” again. “Just listen.”
He gathered us around him. “All right, children. We’re going to see some of Santa’s workshops. And you never know what might happen there.” Well, when we looked all around, we could see on either side of the path were these little houses. And they had little tiny windows with little window panes, all surrounded with twinkling lights. And the edges of the houses all had twinkling lights. And there was smoke coming out the chimney.
And as far as we could look down the path, there were little houses. And at the end, there was a great big house covered in lights. “Come along,” said Timothy. “We must get to our first shop.” And we trotted behind him. He turned into one little path and walked toward the door.
Oh, we were so excited. And from that house, the smell of cinnamon came and joined with that faint smell of chocolate. Timothy raised his hand to knock on the door.
Chapter 2
Timothy was knocking at the workshop door, and we were lined up behind him. Just me, then my brother, then my sister, and the dog. And the smell that came out of that workshop was cinnamon. Suddenly, the door swung open, and there, standing in front of us, was another little elf, all dressed in brown. Brown cap with a pom-pom, brown shirt, brown trousers, brown shoes with little turned-up ends, and the pom-pom again. Big black belt.
He said, “Welcome children, my name is Cinnamon. You’re at the Lego shop.” The Lego shop! We were so excited. We went sort of tumbling into the shop.
“Okay children, just a minute. Everybody stand up.” And we stood up because we had all fallen down on top of each other. We started to look around. There were cases all around the room with glass fronts filled with every kind of Lego imaginable. And Duplos. We had some of those at home, so we were pretty excited.
We could see the one that was the boat we built with our dad. And we could see the one that was the castle that we built. And we could see the little cars that we had built. We were wandering around the shop, looking at all the Legos and remembering the Duplos from when we were little. I certainly remembered the ones that my baby sister played with—the Duplo that made itself into a little doll garage.
As we were looking around, my brother said, “Well, can we play with some of these?” Cinnamon smiled, and so did Timothy. “Come this way, children,” he beckoned. We followed him to the back of the shop where there was a curtain hanging down. He pulled the curtain to the side. “Go right in,” he said.
I, of course, went first because I was the oldest. We went marching in. We were in a room, an enormous room. There were tables everywhere covered with Legos and Duplos. Some were already built into castles and houses and farms and spaceships and boats. Some were not.
Around the entire room, it looked like there was a railroad track. On the other side of the room, there was an engine built of Legos but big enough for a kid to sit in. Well, that’s what we all wanted to do first. We went racing over there. Cinnamon said, “You can each have a turn. And while one of you is driving the engine, the rest of you can play.”
I got the engine first because I was the biggest, like I told you. I sat in, and Cinnamon said, “Just press the pedal.” So, I pressed the pedal, and I saw a string. I pulled it. Woo, woo, it went. The engine started going up the track. Oh my gosh, I was so excited. I didn’t even have to steer, really. I just sat inside the engine.
Meanwhile, my brother and my sister had gone off, and they were building Legos at one table and then at another table. We had never seen so many Legos. It was amazing. As my engine was going around the track, I saw a little sign for a station. Cinnamon told me to step on the brake. So, I stepped on the brake, and the train stopped.
I called out, “All aboard!” My brother and sister and the dog came running over and jumped into the passenger car, which was somehow now behind me. Cinnamon said, “Start up again. See where you go.”
I pressed that pedal and pulled that string. Woo, woo. The train started going. We went around a bend. We could see all the Lego tables there, but suddenly we were in another room somewhere else. We don’t even know where to this day.
Ahead of us, there was a castle built entirely of Legos, our size. I drove the train around the track, and there was a station right there at the castle. I stepped on the brake, and we all got out and ran to the castle. We climbed up the steps, went into the tower, and lowered the drawbridge. We explored the castle and looked at all the people.
On one table, there were little Lego foods. Somehow, when we picked them up, they turned into real food! Of course, we were all eating the cakes on the table. It turned into delicious, real food. Oh, I can’t even tell you how much fun it was.
When we decided to go back to the big room, my brother took a turn driving the engine and brought us back. Then my sister took a turn on the engine—with the dog. When they drove us out again, there wasn’t a castle anymore but a pirate ship. We pulled up at the station, got off, and climbed aboard the pirate ship.
We lowered the plank, raised the plank, explored the ship down below, and climbed up to the sails. We raised the sails, pulled them down, and did all the things pirates do, I guess. Then, my sister drove us back to the big room.
It was so much fun. I never wanted it to stop. Then Cinnamon called us over. “Children, come to me. I have something to ask you. We’re looking for the next things we should make out of Legos. What kind of a kit should we do next? And you children can give us some ideas for next year.”
Oh, wow. That felt really exciting. My little sister piped up, “I want a riding place where we can have horses.” Cinnamon said, “Oh, like a stable with horses made of Legos.” “Yes,” she said. The dog nodded. Cinnamon wrote that down on his beautiful brown pad.
My brother said, “Well, I want—you know that Arctic Explorer thing you’re making? I want more Arctic Explorer ones. And I think a Captain Hook Peter Pan pirate ship, even bigger than the one we saw, where we could fly like Peter Pan.” Cinnamon wrote that down.
Then I said, “Well, I think my father would like one like the Celebrity Chef. He likes to cook. And it could be a whole thing like the Celebrity Chef. He could go right in there in the Lego Celebrity Chef kit and start cooking.”
Timothy started laughing. “Well, okay, I’ll write that down. And what would you want?” he looked at me. I said, “I’m not sure. I think I want one with bicycle racing. Not motorcycles, but bicycles that you have to pedal. It could be like a whole bicycle racing course, and we could race over jumps and under bridges and up rocks. It would be so much fun. That’s what I want.”
Cinnamon wrote that down. Then he said, “Well, children, we’ll see what we can do for next year.” He closed that big book. I can tell you, we felt very proud of ourselves for giving Cinnamon those ideas.
Then Timothy said, “Come on now. We have to go to the next shop.” “Oh, we don’t want to go,” we said.
Timothy replied, “Are you saying you don’t want to see a new workshop?” “No, no, that’s not what we meant,” we all shook our heads quickly.
“Well, come on then, children. It’s time to say goodbye to Cinnamon and see where we’ll go next.” Cinnamon led us out of the big back room, through the curtain, back into the front shop. He gave us each a big hug. And when he did, I felt like I was eating a cinnamon bun. It was wonderful.
We waved goodbye, and the little shop door shut with the tinkle of a bell. Timothy was walking first, and we were, of course, following right behind him with the dog at the end. Down the snowy main path, Timothy turned to the left. “Come this way, children. Let’s see what workshop we’ll go to next.”
Chapter 3
Timothy the elf was walking down the path through Santa’s workshops, and I was following him with my brother and my sister and the dog behind. Timothy was taking us to another workshop, and we didn’t know which one it was going to be.
This time, we walked down that main path and then we turned off to the right towards another one of the little tiny houses with the lights all on the window panes and the smoke curling from the chimney. But this one smelled kind of like my grandmother’s spaghetti gravy. I could almost taste the meatballs. I was kind of feeling hungry.
Timothy walked right up to the door with us behind him, and he knocked and the door was opened by another elf. And this elf was all dressed in green from his head to his foot. He had a big smile on his face and he said, “Welcome children. My name is Oregano and my workshop is the Arts and Crafts Workshop. There are so many things here for you to do.”
He welcomed us inside, and there were little cases all around the little tiny room and they had modeling clay and paints and crayons and Lincoln logs and things to make paper mache and coloring books and things to make, you know, those little sticks that you could play the stick game with. And we were looking at all this.
We weren’t actually that excited about it, to tell you the truth, until Oregano said, “Well children, I think I have some more things to show you in the back.” And we followed Oregano to the back of the workshop. Another curtain, he pulled it aside and—another enormous room.
On one wall, there was a giant piece of white paper. On one side of the room, there were great big pots, like so big we couldn’t even—we’d have to climb a ladder to look into them. And another side of the room, crayons as big as we were. Another part of the room, there was modeling clay, all the colors you can imagine.
And Oregano said, “Well, you children can create whatever you want.”
And my brother said, “Well, I want to be a painter, but how can I paint on that big wall?”
“Oh-ho,” Oregano said, “We have paint brushes that are remote controlled.” And suddenly, in front of that big white wall, there were all these pots of paint and a great big paintbrush. Oregano took us over there, and he gave the control to my brother.
“Now press this button, it picks up a paintbrush. Press this button, it’ll dip it in a pot. Press that button, you can make it paint on that piece of paper.”
My brother couldn’t stop grinning. He started straight away with that remote-controlled paintbrush, making huge, huge swatches of color all over that paper. He was so excited.
My little sister, she wanted to go play with the crayons that were as big as she was. And she thought to herself, “Well, how am I going to pick them up?” But Oregano seemed to know what she was thinking.
He said, “Come with me, I’ll show you what you can do with these crayons.” There was paper on the floor. Oregano said, “Sit down here and strap on these skates.” She strapped on the skates.
He said, “Now, just go over to each crayon, put your foot against the crayon, and the color will come onto the skates. And you can skate around on the paper and make pictures.”
Have you ever heard of anything like that? We had never heard of anything like that. And my sister started doing that.
Well, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Did I want to build with that modeling clay? Did I want to do something else?
And Oregano said, “I have just the thing for you.” And he took me to the far side of the room where those big, enormous pots were. He had to climb up a ladder to look into them. He said, “This is where we mix the colors for our crayons. You can help me mix the colors. Climb up on this ladder with me.”
I climbed up on the ladder, and there was kind of a ledge we could walk on. And there were these big things hanging down like upside-down candles.
He said, “Those hold color. And if we press a button, it’s going to squirt into the big pot of wax. And then we can press another button, and it will start mixing it up. And you can choose which colors to squirt in.”
Oh, my gosh, what power! I started pressing buttons, pressing buttons, pressing the stirring button, pressing buttons, pressing buttons, pressing the stirring button. And finally, I made a color kind of like a—oh, it was kind of like a light brown.
I said to Oregano, “Well, what are we going to call this color?”
And Oregano said, “I have an idea for you. There is a color that’s 2,000 years old called fallow.”
I said, “What does that mean?”
“Well, it’s the color of the fields when there’s nothing growing in them, or the color of a deer, kind of a light brown. You could call it fallow—Dede’s s fallow. Because remember, that is my nickname, Dede.
“Dede’s fallow” Oh, I love that. So that was one color.
And then another huge pot came by, and he said, “We can make another color here.” And I started pressing those buttons again. I want red. I loved red. Pressing button, pressing button, colors going in, pressing the stirring button.
Meanwhile, my brother was still painting on that wall, making amazing creations. And every time we finished one sheet of paper, magically another big sheet of paper came on the wall, and that first one went away.
And my little sister, she was skating all around, coloring all kinds of things with all kinds of colors. We were having so much fun. I created a color red called fallow red. That’s what I called it.
It was from Sweden, Oregano said, and it was such a deep red color. People used to paint their houses that color, so it looked like bricks. I really liked that color. Then I created one more color. It was called malachite, kind of like a greeny color, but to me it almost sparkled. It was going to be called Dede’s malachite. I was feeling great.
Oregano told me these colors would be out the next year, and I could see them in my big box of 94 crayons, which I had never had a box that big, but he said not to worry about it.
We were having so much fun, we could hardly hear Timothy calling us to stop. “Children, come on, my artists. It’s time to go to the next shop.”
This time we didn’t argue, because we knew there would be another adventure at another shop. We climbed off our ladders, we took off our skates, we put down our remote controls, and we followed Oregano to the front of the shop.
I just have to tell you that the smell of spaghetti gravy was so overwhelming, and suddenly in front of each one of us was a little fork with a meatball covered in gravy. We popped it into our mouth—it tasted just like Grandma’s. It hit the spot.
We all gave Oregano big kisses goodbye, and the door shut behind us with a tinkle of the bells, and we trotted behind Timothy down the path to the next workshop.
Chapter 4
Timothy, the chief elf, was walking down the path between all Santa’s workshops. We were following him—my sister, the dog, my brother, and I—wondering what workshop we would get to see next. We were trotting behind him. He seemed to walk so fast, but it kept us warm, though, as we chattered to each other, “Where do you think we’re going to go? What do you think we’re going to do?”
This time, we walked a little further, and as we were walking, we heard a noise that sounded kind of like a pig. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like to me. It was kind of like, “Hm, hm, hm, hm.” We didn’t know what it was and were kind of a little scared at first. I said, “Timothy, what’s that noise we’re hearing? That ‘hm, hm, hm’?”
He said, “Children, that’s the reindeer. If you look over there,” and there we looked, and there was a big barn, “that’s where Santa’s reindeer live.”
“Oh!” We thought we might get to go see the reindeer, but no, that’s not where we went. We turned in the other direction and came up to another little workshop.
This workshop was covered in snow—more snow than the other ones—and there were still the little twinkle lights. As we walked closer, there was a smell. Well, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but when Timothy knocked on the door, it was opened by a little elf dressed in a kind of whitish, pale pinkish outfit. He said, “Hello, children. My name is Ginger.”
I knew just what that smell was. It was the smell of ginger snaps, the kind my mother made. Oh, it smelled so good I was hungry again. As we all tumbled inside the shop, Ginger held out a plate of ginger cookies. We all grabbed one and shoved it in our mouths, munching away as we chattered.
“Well, where are we?” Because there was nothing along the walls of this shop. But right in the middle, there was a big sleigh—kind of like Santa’s sleigh. Ginger and Timothy smiled.
“Well, children,” said Ginger, “this is the snow shop.”
The snow shop? We couldn’t imagine what that was.
“Well, you see the sleigh here? Come on through the back.” And we went through that special back door again, and there, in this room, there were sleds, there were toboggans, there were skis. We didn’t know how to ski. There were hills made out of snow. There was a snow fort. We knew how to build those. We played in those all the time. And then there was this big package that said, “Igloo-making kit” on the side.
Ginger said, “You children can learn how to do all kinds of things in the snow—or just play.”
The first thing we wanted to do was go over to that fort and have a snowball fight. The dog was running back and forth, barking and barking excitedly. I got behind the wall, and my brother got on the other side of the wall. My little sister came with me, and we started making snowballs and throwing them at each other. Ginger and Timothy joined in, too.
The funniest thing was, my brother threw one, and it hit me right in the face. I opened my mouth to lick off the snow—and it tasted like marshmallows! I picked up the snow and took a taste. That didn’t taste like marshmallows. But the next snowball my brother threw at me landed on my shoulder, and I took a taste of that. That tasted like marshmallows. It was amazing.
We were having so much fun throwing snowballs everywhere. And then I wanted to wash my brother’s face in snow. Isn’t that an awful thing? We used to do that to each other. So I went over and picked up a big glob of snow, and as I put it to his face, he stuck out his tongue and said, “Mmm, this is delicious.”
He didn’t care that I was washing his face in marshmallow-tasting snow. By the time we finished having that snowball fight, we decided we wanted to go sledding down the hill. We went sledding at home a lot.
There was a fabulous sled—the kind with the red flyer handlebars. We didn’t have any of those, and we were excited to try one. It was a great big long one. Ginger pulled us up that snow hill, and the three of us got on, sitting up straight—my brother in front this time with his legs on the steering wheels of the sled—and whew! Down the hill we went, at the speed of light, I think, crashing into a big snowbank at the bottom and falling off and licking our faces with that delicious marshmallow flavor.
We did that over and over again. We couldn’t stop. It was so much fun. Every time we started down the hill, it seemed like we were going faster and faster, and we went further and further.
By the time we finally got tired of that, we decided we wanted to build that igloo. We didn’t really want to go skiing. We’d never been skiing before, but the igloo seemed like a good thing to do. So we ran over to that big box that said “Igloo Making Kit,” and we said, “Ginger, can we make this igloo?”
“Well,” he said, “of course you can, children.”
And before we could turn around, the covering had come off that box, and there were these stacks and stacks of what looked like ice rectangles, but they were made of sugar. Oh boy, this was so much fun.
We said, “Well, how are we going to glue the sugar cubes together?” And a big pot appeared, and in that pot was some kind of icing that tasted like marshmallow again. You knew it was going to be that.
We started slathering the marshmallow icing on stacks of sugar cubes and made this amazing igloo. When we got to the top where it had to join, we weren’t sure how we could make that happen because this igloo was big enough for the three of us to get into with the dog. Ginger and Timothy helped us glue those sugar cubes together so they would make the top of the igloo with a little hole in it for the smoke to go out in case we had a fire.
Then we all got inside the igloo and just started giggling and laughing and licking the walls to taste those sugar cubes. Ooh, it was delicious. And there was no one there to tell us we couldn’t have any more. That was almost the best part. I don’t think we ever wanted to leave our sugar cube igloo. We wanted to just keep licking those walls.
We talked to each other. We said, “Gosh, we could go to sleep and wake up and have sugar cubes for breakfast and just keep licking. I wonder how long we could live here without anything else.”
And then we thought, we could go outside, get the marshmallow icing, and make snow melt to have that for our water. We thought this would be a fabulous life. We stretched out there with the dog between us.
Timothy finally came to call us. “Children, come out from the igloo.”
We crawled out. Remember, we were in our bathrobes and slippers, and we were covered with bits of sugar cubes and marshmallow icing. He said, “Let’s clean you up.”
He and Ginger stood in front of each of us and brushed us off until our bathrobes, PJs, and slippers were as good as new. They even took the bits of sugar out of our hair.
It was so much fun. We asked if we could go on the sled again, and Ginger said, “Well, this time, would you each like your own sled?”
Oh, we thought that was a good idea. So Ginger took us to the side of the snow mound and gave us each a sled to pull up. He pulled a sled up for the dog, too, because Dog was going to have his own sled.
When we got to the top, we all got on our sleds. This time, we were lying down, holding onto the handles. Dog was sitting up so proudly, just sitting there on top of his sled.
Ginger and Timothy gave us each a push to get us going. And we flew down that hill. Miles we went—miles. We just kept flying and flying, steering back and forth. Oh my gosh, it was so much fun.
I could see my brother and sister sort of to the side, and Dog was on the other side of me, sitting up, the wind blowing in his hair. Dog looked so happy.
At the end, of course, we crashed into the snowbank, got up, and brushed ourselves off, laughing and giggling. We were having so much fun.
Ginger called, “Come on, children. It’s going to be time for you to go to the last place.”
Timothy and Ginger took us to the door. We gave Ginger a big hug, and he gave us each another ginger snap that we promptly ate. Sleigh riding makes you really hungry.
We waved goodbye, and the door closed with a tinkle of bells. Timothy said, “Now, we’re going to the very special place—the last stop in your tour of the North Pole.”
Chapter 5
Timothy had just told us we were going to the last stop on our adventure. We were excited. We were hoping—oh, we were hoping—it was going to be Santa’s house.
As we were walking down the path, the moon was shining down, and suddenly, right behind me, because I was the last one in line, I heard that “Hm, hm, hm, hm” sound. “Hm, hm.” The sound Timothy had told us before was the reindeer. I looked behind me, and there was a reindeer.
He was enormous, way bigger than us, and he was just plodding along behind us. He had some red ribbon tied on his antlers.
“Brother, sister,” I said, “stop, turn around.”
We all stopped, and the reindeer stopped too. He picked his head up and seemed to be smiling at us. Timothy said, “Well, you can say hello to him, children.”
We went over to his head and started petting his soft reindeer face, while Dog just sat there, looking with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. The reindeer really did seem to be smiling at us. He smelled like—well, I don’t really know how to describe it. How do reindeer smell? He just had a reindeer smell about him.
Timothy said, “All right, come on, we’re all going.”
We turned back around and started walking behind Timothy again, with Reindeer following us. We didn’t know which one it was—he didn’t have a name tag—so we were just calling him Reindeer.
We walked down the long path toward the big house at the end, the one I’d told you about before. It had lots of windows covered with twinkle lights, a big red front door, and a large chimney with smoke curling out. The eaves were dusted with snow, and the lights twinkled underneath them.
As we got closer, we knew it was Santa’s house—we just knew. The smell coming from that house was a mixture of chocolate chips, cinnamon, ginger, spaghetti gravy—oh, all the wonderful smells you could imagine. Vanilla, all wrapped in one. I can’t really explain it, but I remember it so well.
Timothy knocked on the door, and it was opened by, of course, Mrs. Claus. She looked just like we imagined she would. She had white hair, a big apron wrapped around her middle, and the most beautiful smile.
She said, “Children, come in.”
We tiptoed inside while Reindeer stayed outside, but Dog came in with us. We were in a hallway, and off to one side was a big living room. At the end of the room, there was a fireplace, and in front of the fireplace sat a big chair.
From behind it, we saw a head of white hair and two black boots—big ones—propped up near the fire.
Mrs. Claus said, “Shh, children, he’s sleeping. He’s very tired. He has to rest up for the big trip, so we won’t wake him up now.”
We just stood there. I was so excited I couldn’t even say a word. So were my brother and sister.
After a moment, Mrs. Claus said, “Well, come into the kitchen so I can give you something for your journey.”
We followed her into the kitchen, and there was a big round table. Timothy was right with us, as always. The table was covered with plates of cookies—every kind of cookie you could imagine.
There were my favorite kind: chocolate chip, just like the ones my grandmother made. There were also cinnamon roll-up cookies, oatmeal cookies, peanut butter cookies, brownies—anything you could think of. If you thought it, suddenly, it was on the table!
Mrs. Claus gave us each a cup of hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream that made a big castle-like swirl on top of the cup.
She said, “Have whatever you want, children.”
We started eating—we were so hungry from our adventures. Even though we’d had gingerbread cookies and meatballs at some of the workshops, we still sat there munching with big smiles on our faces.
Dog sat on the floor, and Mrs. Claus put a bowl down in front of him filled with—well, I don’t know what kind of dog food it was, but Dog loved it. He couldn’t stop eating. Timothy was munching away too.
After what seemed like forever, we started to feel sleepy and very full. Timothy said, “Children, it’s time for me to take you back home.”
We didn’t want to go.
Timothy said, “Well, if I don’t take you home, then you won’t be there to wake up Christmas morning after Santa has been to your house.”
Mrs. Claus said, “If you would like to tell me, children, what you would like for Christmas, I’ll tell him when he wakes up.”
We each took a turn whispering our longings and wishes into her ear. She gave us each a big hug—and Dog too. Then we walked back to the door.
Timothy said, “Come on, I see our moonbeam.”
There, right on Santa’s walk, was a big circle of moonlight, the moon shining a beam right there. We sadly but happily waved goodbye to Mrs. Claus, and we stepped into the circle.
Timothy said, “Now children, hold hands. Don’t forget.”
We grabbed hands, and Dog grabbed my little sister’s robe.
And before we knew it, we were at the top of the moonbeam again, looking down. On one side, we could see Santa’s house and the workshops. On the other side, we could see our little house.
Timothy said, “Take a deep breath now. I don’t want to lose you this time.”
We grabbed each other tightly and, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity, blinkity—bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk. We landed in the moonbeam on the floor of our bedroom.
Timothy said, “Children, take off your robes and slippers and quick, get into bed.”
We did exactly as he said. And do you know, somehow we were asleep before we even knew Timothy had left us to go back up that moonbeam. Dog was asleep too.
The next morning, we woke up. I looked at my sister. She looked at me. I looked at my brother. He looked at me.
“I dreamt that,” I said. “I dreamt that.”
“I dreamt that,” we all started saying at once.
Could it be true? We all had the same dream. Did we really go to Santa’s workshops? Did we really go up the moonbeam?
Well, I, being the oldest and the wisest, said, “Oh, I don’t think that could have happened.”
“No, that could not have happened.”
Right then, my mother called up, “Children, come on down for breakfast.”
We put our robes and slippers on, grabbed Dog, and started going down the stairs.
And right when we got to the bottom, my little sister put her hand in her bathrobe pocket. Her eyes got wide.
“Wait, you guys,” she said. “Wait a minute.”
She pulled out from her pocket a half a chocolate chip cookie.
We smiled at each other and went in to have breakfast with our mother.
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