For: Miss Jayne

From: OrtonsMistress

Title: The Dysfunctional Functional Gibbs Family Christmas

Prompts:
Snow

Hope you enjoy this!

Jenny was finishing up final paperwork before the holidays. She was signing off on the last report, when her husband came strolling into the office, with a giggling four year old over his shoulder.

"Mama, daddy's tickling me!" Catie squealed, as Gibbs set her down on the floor, letting the blood rush back to the rest of her body.

"I can see that," she laughed, as Catie ran over to her. "Let me finish signing off on these, and we'll be ready to go home. We still need to finish decorating the tree, so it will be ready when Santa comes tonight."

"Yeah, yeah!"

Watching his wife and little girl interact made Gibbs smile. Knowing that the road to get their little family had been rough, especially the beginning of Jenny's last pregnancy with their son Liam. There was a brief time that they thought they would lose their son; so after a brief hospitalization during her fourth month, she and Gibbs decided it would be best if she took a leave of absence from the agency, to keep from the stress the cases and long hours could cause.

"Team's going to meet us at the house with pizzas," Gibbs said, going over and grabbing Liam up from the bassinette Jenny had put in her office. Getting him bundled up, he waited for her to finish signing off on the last file and getting Catie's coat on her. Once they were all ready, he swapped kids with her and carried the obviously anxious little girl in his arms. Keeping his free arm around Jenny's waist, he led his family out of the building and down to the sedan.

"Who is ready for some hot cocoa?" Abby asked a few hours later, after the team had added their own ornaments to the Gibbs family tree. Once the tree had been finished and the pizzas eaten, Tony, Ziva, McGee and Catie went outside to have their annual snowball fight—with Ziva and Catie coming out victorious again.

"Me! Me!" Catie exclaimed, as she was still chilled from the snowball fight.

"Not too much Abs," Gibbs ordered, knowing it would be hard to get Catie to sleep that night anyway, without the added sugar from the chocolate.

"I know, Gibbs," she replied.

Going into the living room, Gibbs sat down on the couch next to Jenny, who was currently feeding Liam and talking with Ducky. Listening to their conversation, he was almost taken by surprise by the dive bomb of Catie. "Daddy," she whispered loudly, moving around on his lap to sit down and get comfortable.

"Yeah, baby," he said, kissing the side of her head.

"Tony and me want to open presents," she said, her piercing green eyes staring straight at him.

"Tony and I," he corrected, before chuckling at the puzzled look she gave him.

"No, Tony and me," she said again, not understanding that he was correcting her grammar.

Shaking his head lightly, he hugged her to his side. "When mama gets done talking with Grandpa Ducky, you can ask her if we can open presents now," he said, knowing that Jenny wouldn't say no.

"Okay," she replied, laying her head back against his chest. "She be done soon?"

Chuckling lightly at the impatience of their daughter, Gibbs knew who she got that from, as Jenny had said when she was little, she could never fall asleep on Christmas Eve, waiting for Santa to come and the presents the next morning. "Give her a couple more minutes, sweetpea."

"Alrigh'," she said, letting out an over dramatic sigh, no doubt having picked that up from Tony.

A few minutes later, Jenny had finally finished her conversation with Ducky and given Catie and Tony permission to open presents, when Abby came over with a camera. "Wait, I want to get a family picture of you guys," she said, smiling hopefully at them.

"Okay," Jenny replied, knowing Gibbs would say no.

"Everybody smile," Abby said, getting a pretty perfect picture. "I'll make you guys a copy."

"Thank you Abby," Jenny said with a light laugh, as she saw that Catie was about to go crazy looking at the small pile of presents for her from the team. "Okay Catie, you can open your presents now."

"Yay!" She exclaimed, jumping off Gibbs lap and over to the stack of presents. "Who's this from?" she asked, holding up a brightly colored Frozen wrapped present.

"It's from me and Ziva," Abby said, getting her camera ready to take pictures of her opening all the gifts.

Tearing off the wrapping paper, Catie's eyes got huge as she saw the Elsa castle playset that she had seen with Abby when they were shopping. "Mama! Daddy! Look wha' Abby an' Ziva got me!"

"That's great, baby," Jenny said, giving both Abby and Ziva pointed looks, knowing the castle wasn't cheap. "What do you tell them?"

"Thank you!" She exclaimed again, getting up and giving them both hugs. Going back over to her presents, she continued opening them. By the time she was done, she had received some new Lego blocks from Tim, Frozen sing-a-long, a couple Sofia the First and Strawberry Shortcake DVD's from Tony. From Ducky and Jimmy, she got an array of kid friendly board games.

"Hey squirt, when we come over for New Years, we'll play some games with you," Tony said, looking over her shoulder and seeing the age appropriate board games.

"Cool!" she said, smiling up at him.

Looking at his watch, Gibbs made the dreaded announcement. "Looks like it's time for someone to go to bed."

"Do I have to?" she asked, a small whine in her voice. "I wanna see Santa come down the chimney."

"Sweetie, if you don't go to bed Santa won't come," Jenny said, handing Liam over to Ducky and getting up from the couch. "The quicker you go to bed and get to sleep, the sooner he'll come here."

Getting up from her spot on the floor, Catie let out a sad sigh. "All right mama."

"Go give daddy a hug and kiss goodnight."

"Night daddy. I love you," Catie said, climbing up on Gibbs lap to give him a hug and kiss.

"Night baby girl," he said, kissing her cheek gently. "Love you too."

Later that night, after Jenny and Gibbs had cleaned up the downstairs, they ate the cookies left out for Santa and managed to get all of Catie's presents up from the basement—they were finally able to relax in front of the fireplace and see the snow still falling over the city.

"Would you have thought that sixteen years ago, when I started on your team, we'd one day be married with two wonderful kids, and the wacky extended family we got?" Jenny asked, leaning back against Gibbs' chest.

Taking a sip of the heavily spiked eggnog he had, he ran his free hand through her hair gently. "Has it really been that long?" he mused, as he thought of his answer. "Sixteen years ago, no, I would not have pictured all this. During Paris I had thought about it."

"You know, there are days that it doesn't seem like it's been all these years. Other days, it's felt like it's been even longer."

"Especially the first three years you were back as Director." he chuckled, knowing they had both made things hard on each other during that time.

Taking his mug of eggnog out of his hand, she set it down on the coffee table, before turning around in his arms to look him in the eye. "Thank you for this life Jethro."

Looking at her a little perplexed, he asked. "What are you thanking me for? I wanted this life with you in Paris, but I was too foolish to actually say the words back then."

"Fine," she chuckled, leaning in and kissing him. "Thank you for giving me, us, a second chance to have this wonderful life together."

Keeping her in his arms, he whispered in her ear. "Thank you for coming back to me."

"Merry Christmas Jethro."

"Merry Christmas Jen."