“This is wonderful!” Mary is excited.

“I want to be a member of the Christmas Team!” Archie says.

“We will have a lot of fun together!” Mikky smiles.

The big break between our lessons is over. We need to go back to our classes. But we are very happy that we have a Christmas team now. We can’t wait to do something good together!

Today is the first day of an American Christmas season. Today is Black Friday. Our family has a tradition to go to a big mall to shop. This time, members of our Christmas Team – Mikky, Mary and Archie go with us.

We arrive at the Mall on a big red bus.

“Mommy, can we go shopping ourselves with Betsy, Mikky, Archie and Mary, please? And you will go shopping with Daddy and Timmy.” I ask.

“Well…” our mother thinks.

“I want to go with you, Rex! I want to go with you!” Timmy starts to jump.

“Well,” our mother continues, “I think that you puppies are old enough. Yes, you can go on your own. Let’s meet here at the same place in three hours.”

“Thank you, Mommy!” I kiss my mom.

“You are the best Mommy in the world!” Betsy kisses our mom.

“And what about me?” Timmy starts to cry. “Can I go with them, Mommy?”

“Well, Timmy, if you go with me and Daddy we will buy you the tastiest ice cream in the world. But if you still want to go with puppies you can.” Mommy smiles.

Timmy stops to cry and starts to smile.

“You know, Mommy, I love you and Daddy very much. I will go with you!”

“So, we have everything for gingerbread now. What else do we need to buy?” I ask our friends.

“We need to buy everything for the Christmas cards.” Archie answers. “And also we need to buy little presents for our family and friends.”

“But where can we buy them?” I ask again.

“I know one amazing little shop for artists on the third floor of this Mall.” Mary says. “I usually go there with my parents. There we can buy beautiful paper for Christmas cards, paints, brushes and little decorations.”

“What decorations?” Betsy asks Mary.

“Little golden stars, pink hearts, silver snowflakes. We can stick them on the Christmas cards!”

“Oh, our Christmas cards will look so beautiful! I can’t wait to go to the shop for artists!” Betsy is very excited.

“Let’s go then!” I say.

We leave the super market and walk to an escalator. The escalator lifts us to the third floor. We see a lot of little shops there. But which shop is ours?

“We need to turn to the left now and then walk straight for a little”. says Mary.

We turn to the left and then we walk straight for a while. We see a beautiful little shop. It has a big poster on its wall. On the poster is a dog with paints and a brush. The dog is smiling.

“Here it is!” says Mary. “It is the shop for artists.”

We come in. We see a lot of shelves with paints. The paints are in different jars: small, medium size and big. We see a lot of different brushes on the shelves: thin and thick, long and short.

A Lady Dog seller comes to us.

“Hello, how may I help you?”

“Hello!” Mary says. “We need to buy paints, brushes and paper to make Christmas cards. Could you help us to choose the best ones?”

“Of course! I will do it with pleasure!” the Lady answers. “I would recommend you to take this set of paints.” She takes one set of paints from the shelf. “It has twelve different colors. The colors are classic: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, blue, purple, brown, black and two special colors for Christmas: silver and golden!”

“Sounds great!” says Mary.

“May I look at it?” asks Betsy.

“Yes, of course. Here it is.” The Lady Dog seller gives the set of paints to my sister. Betsy takes the set. All of us come closer to look at the set. Betsy carefully opens the box. There are twelve big jars in the box. The jars’ lids are different colors.

“The colors look so beautiful!” says Betsy. “But I think that light blue is the most beautiful color.”

“I like the golden color.” says Mikky. “It is perfect color for our Christmas cards. And what color do you like the most, Archie?”