Emily's first sleep over

well, not really, but she thought it was.

last thursday we got an email from our youth pastor asking for help with the upcoming D-Now weekend. he needed host homes and drivers. i really felt led of God to call and volunteer our house. we have the perfect set up for something like being a host home. there are 5 bedrooms upstairs and two full baths. dan and i are downstairs so i did not feel like they'd be invading our space at all! all weekend i felt an eerie sense of calm about the whole thing. i did not even stress out about having to clean up, etc. i had a lot to do, but i just dropped everything thursday and took care of what i needed to do. i never worried once they were here. i just tried to stay out of their way!

those girls were crazy. it had been a long time since i'd heard a bunch of giggling girls. they giggled about the boys next door, they giggled about our astro's neighboor, they giggled about everything!! not long after they were here we figured out having this age was perfect for our house; they had fun playing with emily's toys!! i think we'll do it again next year. in fact, some of them told us we'd have to because they wanted to come back.

three funny stories about the weekend:



saturday morning ethan (almost 3) came downstairs with his face all scrunched up saying -- i can't brush my teeth!! we asked him why and his reply was -- there is too much make-up in emily's bathroom!! he was not joking, he was really upset with those girls! the leader, ally went upstairs to emily's bathroom to help him move the make-up. she came back down a few minutes later, laughing, saying the only thing on the counter was a tube of toothpaste! i guess he'd been hearing about make-up and he just wanted to make sure it was not going to be left in his space!! also, all this week i had to hear about "those girls" and how they ate all his cinnamon rolls...they are super precious to him and he was not happy about them being gone!

dan cooked supper for them on saturday night. he had two pounds of beef and two pounds of chicken to make them fajitas. i helped him get everything ready, then i went upstairs to put the baby down. when i came downstairs, the fajita meat was GONE! i was only up there for a few minutes! i had a meatless fajita. and, just so you know, they pretty much ate us out of house and home. i'd never seen girls eat so much!



they were outside having one of their sessions, and i went out to take some pictures of them (when they were finished.) that morning i'd warned them not to get on the hammock -- i told them it had a bad case of dry rot. well, before i could turn around some of them were piled on the hammock asking me to take their picture. i did -- right after the hammock busted! they all came crashing down, on the bar mind you, HARD. i laughed. served them right. i'm sure their behinds hurt them all day long. right after it happened one of the girls came to me and said she'd pay for a new one. i think they thought i was going to be mad at them! now i have a really good excuse to get a new one.

so anyway, dan and i had fun. we just kept seeing this same scene but 5 years down the road -- emily's real first sleepover!! emily, ethan and elliot all had fun too. emily was entranced with the girls, she let them dress her and fix her hair. they also played with her and ethan, which they of course loved! it was almost like we had a house full of girls interviewing for a babysitting job!