Page 26 of Guiding Little Gabi

“Yes, sir!” the girls chorused.

“Good. Teacup, are you okay?”

She nodded. “It’s just a tiny scratch. But I broke my favorite flower.” She knew her lips were trembling, but her flowers were special.

He dropped down beside her and hugged her tight. “Don’t worry, babygirl. I’ll get you a new one as soon as we return home. Now, let’s get this sunscreen on you so everyone can go play.”

Once her Daddy decided he had applied enough sunscreen, she called out, “Who’s ready for hot tub fun?”

Hands shot into the air, and a chorus of “me” rang out.

Raleigh kissed her cheek and whispered, “Remember, I’m going to one class, and then I’ll come sit by the pool. And don’t forget what you are supposed to say to everyone.”

Gabi kissed him back. “Okay, Daddy. Now I gotta go hang with my besties.”

Gathering the bath bombs and picking up their towels, they all made their way to the giant hot tub in the outdoor courtyard. Gabi lagged behind, trying to figure out how to explain to her new friends that she wasn’t a lawyer.

Once they were settled, they had to work out how they would achieve their multi-colored patriotic foam. She tried to break into the conversation to tell everyone, but they were too involved in the foam planning. Soon, she got caught up in it, too.

Gabi suggested they drop a bomb of each color in the corners. “Then we can stir them however we want.”

That sounded good to everyone, so she began the countdown. “On one, okay? Three… two…”

“Wait,” Pippi interrupted. “Is that on one or one, then drop them?”

“One, then drop,” Sadie said. “Any more questions?” When no one answered, she nodded. “Go ahead, Gabi. Start over.”

“Okay, on the beat after one. Three… two… one!”

Everyone dropped a bath bomb and watched as the foam swirled up. However, the hot tub was so large that the fizzing bubble foam appeared to get lost in it.

Wren harrumphed, “Well, that was anti-climactic.”

“We just didn’t put in enough bombs,” Sadie explained. “Everyone drop another one.”

They all did just that, but the effect wasn’t much better.

Pippi wasn’t impressed either. “The foam is still mostly white.”

“I have a solution for that,” Hayleigh said. “I anticipated this might happen, so I snuck into Daddy’s main kitchen and got these.” Reaching into her beach bag, Hayleigh pulled out six jars with white tops.

“What are those?” Sadie asked

Hayleigh grinned. “These are jars of food coloring paste. I have three red, three blue. If we smear this all over the bath bombs before we drop them in the water, it will color the foam like it does the icing on a cake.”

Gabi had questions. “If we smear food coloring all over the bombs, won’t it color our hands, too?”

“Nope,” Hayleigh answered, reaching back into her bag. “I brought plastic gloves to protect our hands.”

It still seemed iffy, but Hayleigh had thought of everything. Gabi thought about trying to be the voice of reason, but where was the fun in that? Instead, she held out a hand. “Two gloves and a jar of red, if you please.”

After an impressively short time, the girls had coated all the remaining bombs in food-coloring paste. Gabi almost suggested they try experimenting with just one bomb, but she didn’t want to be the stick in the mud with her new friends, so she nodded along with everyone else.

It turned out she should have spoken up.

Who knew that when you dropped twenty-five red, white, and blue bath bombs coated in food coloring into a giant hot tub all at once, and then added the twenty-something other colored bath bombs everyone had brought, it created a lot of foam. Like, a whole lot.

Even that would have been fine. It was fun. The food coloring did the trick. But then Wren had a brilliant idea. “I think we can do better.”

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