We Laughed 'Til We Cried And Put A Hat On Our Dog

My sister is one of the coolest kids I know. Yeah, sure, she's 14 now, so she likes to think she's no longer a kid, but sometimes I still could swear she's only 7, so she's a kid to me. Probably always will be. Today, Laura, our dad and I went Christmas shopping for our mom. We do it every year, just the three of us. It's always a good time, but what Laura and I look forward to the most is wrapping all the gifts for mom. Our dad is too creative for simple "To Sally, From Jeff" tags on the gifts. He likes to think of tags that will give a clue about what the gift is. So, for example, one year a box of movies was "To Sally, From Ron Howard." (You know, the director. Get it?) Or a pretty standard one is "To Sally, From Pepe le Pew" when it's perfume. (Aren't we clever?)

We haven't gotten around to the gift tags yet, but Laura and I did get all the gifts wrapped, and let me tell you, THAT was a good time. Mom and Dad went to see a musical at MSU, so we were home alone. We cranked up some tunes, busted out the wrapping supplies, and got to work. Since we need dad for thinking up all the funny tags, our solution is to put sticky notes on the gifts after they're wrapped so we don't forget what they are. Here's where we started to get silly. There were no gifts to label at the moment, so I took a sticky note, wrote "Dog" on it, and stuck it on our dog, Maggie. Next, I took another one and wrote "Sister" and stuck it on Laura's forehead. She then thought it would be hilarious to stick one on me. My label? "Loser." So loving.

After we were done labeling each other, we got back to wrapping. A little while later, we obviously felt the need for a mid-wrapping photo shoot. As usual, THAT got silly as well. We took a bunch of pictures of ourselves making dumb faces, then got back to work. Mostly. I grabbed my camera again, shoved it right in Laura's face and ended up with one of the most hilarious pictures of her I have ever seen in my life. Right as I looked at it, our parents called, and I was laughing too hard to answer the phone, so Laura did, giving me a couple of precious minutes in which I could savor the glory of that horrible, alien-faced image of my normally adorable sister. By the time she got off the phone and came back, I was lying on the floor, near tears. She asked "What's wrong with you?" and I responded with some difficulty through my laughter "This is one of the funniest pictures I have ever seen!" Maybe you had to be there, maybe I was just in a weird mood, and maybe it's only funny because it was SO unexpectedly awful, but it struck me as something special. At the risk of being murdered by my sister, here is the picture. (Although it's already on Facebook, so I guess she can't be too mad about this.)

Usually my sister looks something like this:

You know...like some teen model. (P.S.-Aren't we so cute? This was Thanksgiving.)

When comparing the two, I think it becomes a little more obvious why that first picture is so funny. It looks nothing like her. Finally, after keeping the picture to myself for a few more moments of laughter, I allowed her to see it. She thought it was hilarious too, so we burst into a new round of laughter. Together this time. As I'm sure everyone knows, laughing with someone is about 2,398,471.251 times better than laughing alone. (Yeah, I calculated that number out mathematically. Don't bother trying to do it yourself, it will take way too long. Just trust me on this.) Anyway, the combination of both of us laughing together was just too much, and we dissolved into tears. Well, Laura just sort of teared up. Me? I was sobbing. Tears rolling down my face. Proof:

See that? Real tears. (And yes, that's the same sweater from the above Thanksgiving picture. Weird.)

After calming ourselves (well, mostly myself) down, we finished wrapping, gathered our things, and carried a few gifts up to put under the tree. Then, naturally, we sat down to upload the pictures to Facebook. When our parents got home, we wanted to show our mom the hats we bought today. They're super cute, unfortunately we didn't take any pictures yet, so again, you'll just have to trust me. Well, that's sort of a lie. We did take some pictures of Laura's hat. Just not of Laura wearing it. No...we decided to put the hat on Maggie and take pictures of her wearing it. Maggie is one of the chillest dogs I know. We can get away with a lot of crap with her. Unless she has something edible. Or even something she thinks is edible. She'll eat almost anything. Popsicle sticks, corn cobs, charcoal...heck, she even tried to eat a battery one time, and about bit my arm off when I tried to get it away from her. (Not literally of course, because I definitely didn't even lose a finger, but she was not a happy dog.) Otherwise, when food isn't in the picture, it's pretty much anything goes with her.

So, we took this hat--which has a seal face on it by the way--and put it on Maggie. She. looked. AWESOME! Also ridiculous and slightly embarrassed, but she didn't try to get it off, so maybe she actually liked it. It is a pretty adorable, and toasty warm, hat. One funny quirk about Maggie is that she doesn't seem to like having her picture taken. She always seems to know the exact moment the picture is going to take, and chooses that moment to turn away. So it was a little difficult to get a good picture of her in the hat, but we managed.

We caught her mid-nose lick in this one.

Evidence of her embarrassment.

This one is pretty darn good! Thanks for cooperating, Maggers!