Page 86 of Devoted Enough

“This time, it’s couples. The couple who pops the most balloons wins,” Stella stated as she pointed to bags filled with orange balloons. “Each bag has the same amount of balloons. So when it is each couple’s turn, they get a new bag.”

“Who thought up this game?” Beck asked as he stood behind Avery, his arms wrapped around her.

Stella’s smile slipped some as her voice caught in her throat. “It was one of the games Ty Senior had written down to play on Thanksgiving.”

A somber mood quickly washed over the large crowd before Nate clapped his hands. “Then let’s play this game so he has a good laugh upstairs.”

Stella beamed at her grandson. “Shall we start with the older couples and work our way down?”

“Kaylee and I will go first,” Ty said as he took his wife’s hand. They entered the area that had been made into a small pen with panels set up in a large circle. I was assuming it was so the balloons would stay in that area.

“Okay, there are fifty balloons. You have one minute to try and pop as many as possible!” Stella said as she held up a stopwatch. “On your marks, get set, go!”

Ty and Kaylee started stomping on the balloon, but each one kept slipping from under their feet. They ended up laughing more than anything. In the end, they had only popped seventeen balloons, but they both wore huge smiles on their faces.

Stella used a blower to blow the balloons out of the makeshift corral. Then the kids all started playing with the balloons.

Ty brought another bag in and dumped the balloons out.

“Goodness, who blew up all of these balloons?” I asked Nate.

“If I know my grandmother, she has a machine she used to do it.”

“You guys take game nights seriously, don’t you?”

Nate looked at me and laughed. “We do.”

The next couple was Brock and Lincoln. They had popped twenty-five. Tanner and Timberlynn were next. Timberlynn was laughing so hard that she started to do the pee-pee dance and declared she was about to pee her pants, to which her granddaughter Maggie said, “Do you need a big girl diaper, Grammy?”

Blayze and Georgiana were next. They argued for the first twenty seconds about how to pop the balloons and only got ten.

Morgan and Ryan got thirty-one, the highest yet. Rose and Bryson sat out the game, as did Avery and Beck.

Kipton and Hunter tried to beat Morgan and Ryan but only tied them.

When it was Lily and Maverick’s turn, they smiled and declared they would be the winners. They were nowhere close to being winners, with only nine balloons popped since they were both laughing too hard to even try.

All eyes turned to Bradley and Mackenzie. When her face turned bright red, and she shook her head, Merit, Bradley’smother, gasped. That caused Lincoln and Timberlynn to do the same.

“What’s happening?” I asked Lily.

“Mackenzie is pregnant.”

“What?” I asked. “How do you know?”

“How far along are you?” Merit asked.

Bradley took Mackenzie’s hand in his. “Fifteen weeks,” Mackenzie softly said. “I’m due March 19th.”

Cheers erupted as everyone waited patiently to congratulate the happy couple. I’d met Mackenzie often over the last few years. She helped run the you-pick-it farm that Merit and her brother Michael owned. Once the congratulations were over, Josh and Sophia stepped into the corral. They ended up getting thirty-six.”

My mother and Stella went next. They spent more time on the ground laughing than anything, which in turn had everyone else laughing.

“Last but certainly not least, Nate and Haven.”

Nate took my hand and pulled me into the corral. He bent his head so only I could hear him. “Okay, we need to play this differently.”

“How so?” I asked.

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