Lanie and Kate strolled through the mall on their first baby shopping trip, Lanie was six months and Kate was five. They stopped at several stores but so far they hadn't too much. Kate looked down at her watch.
"Well it's time to go and Alexis just told me, that everyone is at the Old Haunt waiting for us let's go."
She opened the door, the bar was empty, and the lights were off.
"Hmmm, where is everyone?" suddenly the lights turned on.
"SURPRISE!" everyone yelled, jumping out of their hiding places.
The room was decorated with blue and pink balloons.
Lanie walked in further examining the room, "You guys planned and did all of this?"
Esposito took her hand pulling her towards him, "Yep mostly Little Castle and Jenny."
Kate smiled at Alexis "Thank you sweetie." Castle walked up behind her, "Hey I paid for the venue you know." They rolled their eyes.
The cake was a two tier cake, with a picture of both women, and the crowd went wild with awws. Then came Castle's gift it looked fairly small. She carefully opened the package, to see a colourful book and a tear slipped down her face and everyone looked to Jim to see why she was crying for a children's book.
"Her mother use to read that to her when she was young, it was their favourite book."
They all nodded with new understanding.
"How did you get this?"
"I bought the rights from the writer, republished them and donated them to some of the local libraries, I want our daughter to have that same connection with you that you had with your mother."
The whole group all smiled except Esposito. "He always has to make me look bad." Lanie rubbed his arm.
She opened the second box which was tiny and pulled out a key.
"What's this?" she asked pulling out the key.
"It's the key, to our new house."
They had been looking for a new house but none had really come to their expectations, there was one but it had been sold before they could buy it, so when Kate looked at the pictures of the same house she looked at him.
"How did you get this?"
"The person who bought it decided to move to England."
Lanie gasped "Oh my gosh, that house is gorgeous.
It was an 8 bedroom, 4 bathroom house with a pool, pond, large pastures and a lovely view and it was just a 15 minute drive to the precinct.
Yep Castle won in the gift department.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OO
Two weeks later when the boxes were packed, they all and were starting to move in, four rooms were taken Martha was going to move out not wanting to disturb the family but they convinced her to stay, besides she was hardly ever there anyway.
"Come on, I want to show you something." Castle said gently pulling Kate upstairs.
"What Rick? The guys will be there any second to help us unpack"
"I know but just come see."
He opened the door and she walked in to see a room painted light purple with a crib, changing bed and other baby furniture, the room was beautiful and she was glad that they remembered she preferred purple to pink for a girl. She turned to him to see Alexis standing next to them
"You guys did all this?"
"It was mostly Alexis." The girl blushed, when Kate turned to her giving her a hug and they immediately made plans to decorate the walls.
" You know, Lanie is confusing me more and more by the minute, one time she hates me the next minute she can't keep her hands off me." Esposito stated putting down the coffee table.
"Jenny use to be like that when she was pregnant too." The men exchanged several stories except... "Dude, are you really that scared?" Esposito asked when Castle hadn't spoken or shared a story.
Castle paused and stared at them "YES, I am she is always on edge now."
Ryan and Esposito looked at each other "Dude we work with her and she is actually cheerful"
They smiled when he looked surprised he had fallen for their trick.
"Last week we were making dinner, and Paula called and told me I had a book signing to do this week, so I told Kate and she got so upset, she asked why I had to go and if I liked to sign women's chest and when I told her I had to, she threw a can at me and told me to have a baby with Paula. The weirdest part is that she woke me up at 1 this morning to have sex and then complained that I kept her up."
Ryan laughed "I remember those days."
"Maybe we should get a men's game room" Esposito suggested.
Yep maybe he should start looking into that.