Since he’d arrived, he’d stood side by side with her, cutting vegetables for roasting, racing some teeny cars with the littler kids, playing a board game with the older kids, and chatting and joking around with all of her sisters, their husbands, and her parents.
She hoped that advertising and the GM of the Glaciers would decide to air the footage a lot. And that everyone would see the man that she saw and fall in love with him, too. Then, therewould be no way that the Glaciers would ever trade him to another team, and he’d be around for a good long time. Because she wanted this man to be in her life always.
As they set all the dishes of food on the table and everyone made their way over, she wrapped her arms around his waist and smiled up at him. “You are pretty perfect. Do you know that?”
It was Christmas Eveandit was Noelle’s birthday. The conversations could’ve revolved around those two subjects as they ate prime rib and maple bacon Brussels sprouts. But since Connor was there, they revolved around hockey and what Katie was like as a kid— one of her family’s favorite subjects whenever she brought someone new to the family table.
“When Katie was born,” her oldest sister, Becca, said, “I was nine. Me, Hope, and Julianne are each only a year-and-a-half apart and Noelle is three years younger than Julianne. So she had a lot of sisters who really wanted to smother her with help.”
“‘Smother’ was definitely a good word for it,” Katie said, and her parents, especially, laughed.
“She tolerated it well enough until she was, what? A year-and-a-half?” Her mom looked at her dad and he nodded, so she continued. “Then one day, Hope was helping Katie to put on her shoes and Katie said, ‘No, I do it.’ And from that point on, she had to do everything herself.”
“And she does meaneverything,” her dad confirmed.
Was that really so bad? She got to be pretty independent and capable at a very young age.
Julianne pointed at Katie with her fork. “I’m pretty sure her first words were ‘No, I do it.”
Noelle nodded. “It kind of became her anthem.”
Katie grimaced and snuck a peek at Connor. He was chuckling along with everyone else, then said, “It’s probably why she’s so good at everything she does.”
“Thank you!” Katie said, feeling vindicated and giving pointed looks to her siblings. “Also, thank you for telling that story instead of the story where I got into the penguin habitat at the zoo that you told the last time I brought a date to Thanksgiving.”
“Oh, that was a good one,” Corbin said.
“No,” Ben said, “it was the chaos caused by getting her back out that made the story great.”
As everyone laughed, reliving probably both their enjoyment at hearing the story and at seeing her date’s expressions as they all told the story in detail, Connor leaned in close to her ear, tickling it and sending a happy shiver straight to her heart as he said. “I’m going to want to hear that story later.”
“And deprive my family the joy of telling it to you at some future family dinner?”
He chuckled. “Fair enough.” But something still seemed off, and she didn’t know what it was.
After dinner was finished and cleaned up, all twelve adults, ten kids, and her parents’ dog, Captain, made their way to the couches or the fluffy rug in front of it so they could watch Katie’s annual Christmas video. It was her favorite part of their celebrations because it brought everything together. All their activities, gatherings, and everyone’s thoughts. She could see how much it made their family bonds stronger and helped everyone to realize how grateful they were for each other.
She woke her laptop that sat on a shelf by the TV, turned on the TV, and went into her laptop’s settings to connect to it. It gave an error that it couldn’t connect using WiFi, and her brother-in-law Cory started to get off the couch, saying “I can help.”
“I’ve got this,” Katie said, a little annoyed.
“No, I do it!” Becca said, and everyone laughed.
Katie had just forgotten that she had put her laptop into airplane mode to minimize distractions while she’d been editing, and it only took an extra two seconds to turn the WiFi back on, and then everything worked.
In Katie’s defense, she kind of had a right to get bugged by everyone always wanting to help. They always assumed that since they were older, they knew more. And since she was the youngest, she needed extra help with everything, like she was incompetent.She wasn’t.
She brought up the video, made it full screen, pressed play, then hurried to her spot on the couch closest to the laptop, and snuggled in right next to Connor.
Since Jack and Noelle were about to become parents, she started by showing an interview she’d shot with the two of them a few weeks ago when they had decorated the gingerbread cars for the train at the side of the room.
“We are so excited because this is the first Christmas that we’ll be spending in our new house!” Noelle said. “We probably won’t be able to say that it’s our first Christmas with a new baby, but you never know when this little one is going to come.”
“But whenever he does,” Jack said, “we are ready. The house is all ready. His nursery is ready. We are… well, we’re not exactly ready, but we’re excited and as prepared as we can be.”
Noelle gave him the sweetest smile, then said, “And the timing couldn’t be more perfect if we had planned it. We fell in love this time of year, we got married this time of year…”
“Noelle’s birthday is this time of year…”
