Intergalactic emergency

Recently, the kids have been very much into the Toy Story trilogy, and when Chad was out one day he picked up a Buzz Lightyear for Liam and a Jessie doll for Mallory. (Liam already had a Woody doll that he received at our company Christmas party a few years ago.) They have really enjoyed running around with these dolls, re-enacting scenes from the movies.

When the kids went to the trailer this week, they took their new dolls with them, and not long after Gramma and Grampa brought them home they called to say they discovered Buzz still sitting at their kitchen table. Liam had forgotten to bring him home.

I wasn't sure how this would go over with Liam and decided not to tell him until he noticed Buzz missing on his own. Well, five minutes later, as I was tucking Liam into bed, he looked over at the desk in his room and the Woody doll sitting on top of it. His face crumpled up and he started sobbing. He remembered that he had left Buzz behind.

And so it was that Gramma and I began a string of phone calls to try to work out the return of the doll, and how it was that I drove out to the trailer to meet Gramma at the front of the park at 7 a.m. yesterday morning, after my swim (which - being in Blenheim - already put me halfway there).

To be honest, I probably would have made the hour-long round-trip even if I hadn't been going to the pool yesterday. Liam's reaction when he woke up and found Buzz again was priceless, and we have a much happier household now.