One Long Night

Because I promised the boys a few months ago, I spent a night in the tree house with them a few weekends ago. And, as with most thing with this tree house, it was horrible. One of the longest nights of my life.

To start with, it had rained most of the day so it was too wet for a fire, which was to be a big part of the night. So with no fire to entertain us we climbed into the tree house and I set up a laptop. We laid on an air mattress and watched Star Wars I (which was the fourth one made... I think). My youngest son fell asleep during the movie and my oldest went out right after. That was about 10:00 pm.

I had noticed during the movie that the air mattress had been losing air. By the time the movie was over I was on the hard wood floor. Unfortunately both the boys wanted to sleep next to me. The loss of air caused me to sink which pushed both of them higher and then over on top of me from both sides. I was stuck like a duck in rut.

Then throughout the night the stars aligned against me to keep me awake. There were fire works, gun fire, a wind storm, acorns bombarding the roof, a loose shudder banging the tree house and of course the air mattress situation. I didn't get any sleep but the boys slept like rocks through it all. In the morning my back was wrecked but the boys were all smiles.

Was it worth it? Sure, once, but we'll have to get a better mattress before I agree to do it again. Oh yeah, and some ear plugs for me.