April acting like the warden over the cell phone was Bahahaha! "Dad, stop!" She totally would disassemble valuable hardware for a midterm!

I loved the Rory and April commiserating about the situations with their dads. And the angst of April not calling Anna was actually quite excellent!

And the future stepsisters meet for the first time! Why didn't we have any April and Rory moments in the original show?

Lorelai's step motherly advice to April about boys was so fluffy and... AHHH! My heart!

It's so sweet how April apologizes to Lorelai, thinking the ruining of her dad's engagement was her fault!

I enjoyed Lorelai and Anna's heart-to-heart chat. They finally reached a truce.

Luke's phone call to Anna was great! And it is so sweet that Lorelai is willing to sacrifice her relationship with Luke to spare any discomfort with Anna and for April.

I've really loved this - seeing Lorelai and Luke sort out themselves and their problems and finding their way back to each other. Lovely and really well written.

I read this when you first posted it before the revival. It is such a good and hopeful piece of Luke and Lorelai’s life together; communication, affection, family. Nothing that the revival brought us. You must have been as disappointed as I was! Nice job on this, wish we could have seen it on the show.

Fantastic story, thank you for writing this!

always thought this was a thoughtful and intelligent approach to a real reconciliation, would have totally prevented the stupidity of their AYITL relationship... Thanks for writing it!

Luke's comment in Chapter 11 about him considering Rory and April as equal in his eyes got me thinking. Most fans hate April because she is seen as nothing more than a tool to break up Luke and Lorelai, creating tension in a very contrived, soap-opera way. And they're right. Vanessa Marano, the actress who plays April, has admitted as much. However, fans don't appreciate her character enough because if you dig a little deeper, April is so much richer than that for one reason: her existence makes Luke and Lorelai EQUALS. Both have now sired a daughter, just with another partner. The only difference, of course, is that Luke was kept in the dark for twelve years, so he has to still learn how to become a parent. Christopher was given the opportunity to learn how to be a parent, but CHOSE NOT TO.

I also love how in this story, Luke and Lorelai freely talk about their kids with each other, ask about them. Lorelai will say, "April's doing this..."; Luke will ask, "How is Rory?" It is depicted most beautifully in Chapter 14, when Luke is discussing how he and Anna co-parent and how they want Lorelai to be April's guardian in a contingency plan should one or both of them die (by the way, a scenario like this plays out in a GREAT epic, The Birthday Party, by Elseajay). It is really a three-way team, with Luke, Lorelai, and Anna by the end - unique all on its own because such a triumvirate between Luke, Lorelai and Christopher is no longer necessary where parenting Rory is concerned. These are dynamics that the original series never got to explore - not even the revival got to explore enough how Luke interacts with both of his daughters (more with Rory, certainly, but not enough in just that one scene with April).

But my most favorite part of all was the Christmas decoration sequence, because it showed the main four of this fic - Lorelai, Luke, Rory and April - all laughing and loving as a beautiful, blended family.

One of the best Gilmore Girls fics out there, along with the sequel, hands down, no contest.

Oh my goodness. What a ride. What. A. Ride.

I have done nothing in my life practically for the last 24 hours except read this fic. Every spare moment — seriously. Your voices are spot on, and your insights into the characters very real, and genuine, and believable. This is by far the greatest and most satisfying immediately post-series fic that I’ve ever read. It has everything that I could possibly want wrapped up into one beautiful package: fluff and banter, sexy times, emotional Luke, Lorelai actually dealing with her emotional baggage in an adult-like way, April/Rory bonding, Lorelai/April bonding, and so much more. I don’t think I could ask for better. Thank you for writing such a beautiful story and putting out into the world.

THIS, RIGHT HERE, should have been Season 8 as ASP originally envisioned it, seriously. I am a huge fan of Luke and Rory, father daughter moments, but this is the first fic I've seen that explores a Lorelai and April, mother daughter dynamic that the show cheated us out of narratively. Of course, the one scene with April in the Revival made up for it in some way but not nearly enough. Come to think of it, I like the stepsisters in this fic, too. The scene with Vanessa Marano and Alexis Bledel in AYITL was just plain awkward. Thank you for writing this!

I'm enjoying this so much! There are so many post season "fix its" but I don't care. They're all unique and I like this take on it. You've captured the LL banter so well - I've smiled like an idiot every time I read your flirty banter dialogue. It's that good. Anyway, I was going to wait to write a review until I read this whole story, but Lorelai leaving the note with the ring got me good and I had leave a review RIGHT NOW. Can't wait to finish Overjoyed and the sequel :-)