[3rd POV]
It was Christmas Eve now, and Billie was having a very interesting start to her day. Haley had woken her up bright and early, at around five in the morning or so. She wanted to start making some of the food that needed an entire day of work.
This was mostly for marination and stuff like that, which could take more than 12 hours to properly make. And if she wanted her food to be damn good, she had to make sure to do everything properly.
Haley had also wanted to finish up the final touches on the apartment, even if the family was not actually spending Christmas Eve at the apartment. They were spending the Eve at Jay's house, and then Christmas itself was at the apartment. That was so that they could do some gift giving with stuff that was a bit too big to bring up to the apartment.
At least in the case of the rest of the family. Billie and Haley themselves had already brought all their gifts up to the apartment, so the family wouldn't be seeing any of them until Christmas itself.
They did bring some cookies though. Freshly baked, and a recipe of her grandmama's, some rather delicious snickerdoodles. She had others that were going to be made, but those were for tomorrow, not today. She didn't want to waste them or anything by making too much.
Although her and Haley had already agreed that whatever cookies were not eaten, would be saved and donated to the less fortunate. And they had both already donated quite a bit for some local children's hospitals, so they could get some new toys. While also donating to soup kitchens so they could have some proper Christmas meals.
The donations were pretty big, so that it would feat a couple of hundred people at the least. Probably more if they were smart with how many portions people got and the size of them.
Besides that, Haley had also been working hard to make sure that nothing was out and about that shouldn't be. As her and Billie had started to have their fun in...other areas around the apartment, since it was their apartment afterall.
So there were some clothes that needed washing and needed to be put away, as well as some...toys.
But thankfully it had not taken long to have it all put away, and now they were heading to Jay's. The Christmas Eve was going to be spent there from the afternoon to the late evening, and according to Haley, that was the normal.
Hell, there was one year where they had it at the Dunphy house, and they had been there from early in the morning to the evening, around 14 hours.
That was too much for Billie personally. She didn't mind staying over for a while, but 14 hours? That was crazy to her. Although this was her first Christmas with someone other than her grandma in...well, a long long time.
Arriving at the house, Haley and Billie glanced at one another when they saw what was in front of them. The house was...decorated.
Overly decorated.
With two massive Santa Claus's outside of the entrance to the house, the roof and side of the house having a large grouping of Christmas lights, that was so bright that it honestly hurt to look at it. It was...
Over the top. Massively so.
"Manny?"
"Probably. I don't even think Gloria would be this crazy with the decorations" Haley replied, agreeing with Billie's assumption. Manny loved to be over the top with...well, everything. And this was right up his alley.
"Do you think Jay has seen what the outside of his house looks like?"
"Oh definitely. Because there is no way Manny set this all up, and he definitely would want to brag about it to Jay" Haley replied with a giggle, as they both walked up to the front door, a box of cookies in each of their hands.
Knocking on the door, the two had waited for only a few moments before it swung open, Jay standing there with a look that said "Kill me now" on his face.
Why?
Because he had reindeer horns on his head, and his nose was painted red.
Billie bit her lip as she fought the urge to laugh at the man, while Haley was openly laughing.
"Yeah yeah yeah, laugh it up" Jay grumbled, as the two walked into the house.
The inside of the house was pretty interesting to look at. It was not even remotely as bad as the outside was, and Haley and Billie could both tell that Gloria had been in charge of this part of it. Probably because she did not want people to go blind while in her house. The outside was one thing, the inside another.
There was also a huge tree of similar size to the one that Billie and Haley had in their apartment. There were some gifts underneath it, but they were the big ones that were not something that they could just bring to Billie and Haley's apartment.
There were also three stockings for Jay, Manny and Gloria. On top of that there were other small figures all over the place, like nutcrackers and such. The other thing that both of them had noticed was that Jay had put a Santa hat on his beloved dog butler.
It was an interesting sight.
"Kehehe" Haley giggled behind her hand, while Billie was just grinning at the man.
"Manny do this to you, or Gloria?" Billie asked, her girlfriend still cackling at her side.
"Both" Jay replied blandly as Haley began to laugh even louder, while Billie just snorted.
"And was it Manny that did the...decorations outside?" Billie asked, her girlfriend hiccuping at her side as she been laughing so much.
"...Yeah. The kid insisted on making it look the best possible. Only to turn my house into a damn night light for this half of LA" Jay said with a grumble, not happy with the state his house was in thanks to Manny.
"Where's Gloria and Manny at?"
"In the kitchen with the others. Probably still laughing about my suffering" Jay replied with a grumble, as he grabbed the two boxes from them and moved to put them onto the table for later.
"Go on and see them" Jay added, as he started to head upstairs to change or something else.
The two entered the kitchen, and immediately were greeted by the others, mostly with back breaking hugs. There was also some food on the kitchen counter, and the kitchen itself was just as decorated as the living room was. Although it didn't have large figurines, just smaller ones.
Haley's family was damn strong for some reason.
"What took you guys so long?" Claire asked, as Haley furrowed her eyebrows.
"We're on time, aren't we? I thought we were supposed to be here around one or two? It's 1:30 right now" Haley asked, rather confused at her mothers words.
"What? No, you're supposed to be here by noon. Who told you that?" At these words, both Haley and Billie turned and gave Phil a look, as the man awkwardly looked away, whistling innocently.
Seeing them looking at Phil, Cliare turned and gave him a sharp glare and yelled.
"PHIL!"
Phil, hearing his wife's yell, just stopped his whistling and sighed. Knowing that he was about to get in trouble with his wife.
All the while, Billie and Haley were both watching in amusement.
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That's the end of the chapter!
Anyways, have a good day!