Laughter is the best medicine

Yesterday was a refreshing escape from the stress of grad-school.   It was full of sugar, giggles, and wonderful sticky hugs.  My "kids" had the day off of school so I got to spend the morning with them.  I took them over to Allie's house where we baked and frosted sugar cookies with Toby.  (thanks for the picture of my bum, Allie)

**** side note **** 

As we were loading up in the car to leave Allie's house, Claire said good bye to Toby.  Matthew asked "Why do you call him Toby?  His name is Leland".  Claire responded, "We've always called him Toby".  They argued it back and forth for a bit until I settled the argument.  It made me smile as I thought about what must be going on in Matthew's head... "Toby" doesn't even sound like "Leland", these people are crazy!

When the kids were finished decorating, Allie and I took over.  We had so much fun making these cute owls.  We spent a long time, putting sprinkles in just the right spots, to make them look as adorable as they do.  So when I looked over and saw Allie dumping left over sprinkles from her plate on the owl in front of her I figured it might be an indicator she was done.  I quickly grabbed the last 3 undecorated owls to save them from the same fate.

That evening brought the greatest trip to Target ever!  It has been a long time since I have laughed that hard for that long.  Allie and I just went to walk and talk for a bit after dinner.  We stopped to look at the new display of Christmas CD's.  Allie was giving me a hard time because every time I touched one of the CD's the whole rack would shake.  She claimed I was using excessive force.  To show her, I gave the whole wobbly display a shake and next thing I knew CDs were raining down on us.  We both laughed uncontrollably as she tried to catch them all.  The woman at the next end cap over, hid her face behind the item she was looking at to conceal her laughter as she asked "Do you ladies need some help?"

Once we cleaned up the CDs we moved on to look at the christmas decorations.  When we came to this display, Allie quoted one of her nephew's responses to these ornaments "Look at those big balls!"  

We laughed and then I told her to pose with them so I could take her picture.  As she reached her hands up, we were surprised to hear someone call her name.  We confusedly looked around as the woman down the isle said "Allie, that's enough.  Come on."  She looked at us warily as we stared and her and laughed.  The woman was talking to her daughter, also named Allie.  We explained, through our giggles, the shared name, and thus the confusion.  She looked amused as we marveled over how unnerving it was to hear someone call Allie's name.  Allie posed again as I took her picture.  We dissolved into giggles again as the woman called out "Allie don't touch those," this time she was talking to us.  Well played, woman in Target.  Well played.