A family that laughs together

Hello, I hope that you are having a good summer so far.  I'm want to slow down and savor these precious days before it's too late- so I'm taking a bit of a break from the computer this week.  Because of that, I don't have have anything new to share- so I've dug into my archives and pulled out something different, for fun.  The following is an essay I wrote several years ago, (part of this collection) about how I love being in a family that laughs together.....

“Ho, ho, ho! Someone’s pinching Santa!” My husband says loudly as he walks in the front door. That’s all it takes to get the kids laughing. I wish you could hear the way he says it. I roll my eyes and pretend I’m not amused. That’s my role when questionably appropriate jokes are told. But inside, I’m laughing, and they all know it. The dog seems to get the joke too, or maybe she just likes the sound of laughter in the house. In any case, she jumps off the couch, tail wagging, and starts prancing around in that adorable way poodles do when they’re happy. It’s a moment I cherish, and one that I’m happy to say, isn’t uncommon, in variations, around my home. 

I laugh most often with my family. We have many of these silly phrases. Words that mean nothing to anyone else, but can send us into fits of laughter until our sides ache. They come from shared stories- ones that no longer need to be told in full. Just the punch line will do.
The Santa joke comes from a story that goes back to high school. My husband and I were both in the school choir and we went to the mall to carol one Christmas. The choir posed for a picture around Santa and one joker decided to give old Santa a little pinch on the botto. (*The word, botto, means bottom, it comes from Kay Thompson’s Eloise books. My daughter adopted the word after reading the books, and it stuck.)

Why Derek chose to tell that story to our kids, I’ll never know. I would be horrified if either of them ever tried to pull that stunt on Santa. For some reason, though, it stuck with my family’s shared odd sense of humor, and it still makes us laugh.

I love silly movies and listening to comedians, but it’s my family that makes me laugh the most. We have a lot of shared stories because we share a lot of time together. I’m blessed to have a husband who spends most of his free time with his family on the weekends. We genuinely enjoy each other’s company. Of course we get on each other’s nerves at times, but laughter is a great way to ease the tension. Laughter brings us closer. Laughter is good for the soul. It’s a good thing to be a in a family that laughs together.