The Party's Over

It's three o'clock in the afternoon and Laura is sleeping on the couch downstairs. The slumber party guests departed a few hours ago.

Near as I can figure, none of them slept last night. I went downstairs at 2:30 a.m. to tell them to go to bed; they were all up and walking around and giggling. I heard voices downstairs at about 6:00 a.m.

This morning Laura showed me where they'd signed their names on the plastic party tablecloth for each hour they were still up. There were little post-it notes on the tablecloth: "up at midnight", "up at 2:00 a.m.", "up at 3:00 a.m.", "up at 5:00 a.m." with their signatures underneath. It looked like everybody signed for each hour.

Max contributed to the party by buying a motion detector spy toy that allows the user to record a message and then hide the motion detector somewhere so when someone walks by a disembodied voice starts speaking. At first he recorded "Hi Laura! What are you doing?" in a very spooky voice. We heard it go off many times, but never really in the vicinty of the girls - I think it was more entertaining for Max then anyone else.

Then he decided to keep it in his own room when he went to bed; he recorded a message that said "Hi Max! How ya doing?" and put it on top of his desk, so that when he got up in the morning it would surprise him. And it did.

I just got home from a run and when I walked in, the motion detector said, "Hi Mom, Dad and I went to watch the game, Laura is downstairs sleeping." So it has its functional uses as well.

The girls made a time capsule and buried some stuff in the front yard.

When was the last time you stayed up all night - not because you couldn't sleep, not because you were being kept up by a fussy baby, not because you had a deadline - just to see if you could? Just for the joy of it?

Who's up at 3:00 a.m.? Come on, sign the tablecloth!