Summer and Slumber Parties

Okay, 5:30 in the afternoon, and I finally feel a little rested. My own fault, once again...

We had a busy day yesterday, once we got moving. The radar kept indicating rain, yet when the front would approach Kalamazoo it would go from green to nothing for no apparent reason! Finally, in frustration, I fired up the lawnmower. (For me this can be as effective as getting a car wash for the average person in bringing rain to fruition.) It DID sprinkle for about ten seconds after I loaded the mower with gas, but within a half-hour of mowing, the sky turned blue! So I continued mowing for no other reason than to even out the 1/2 of the lawn that I'd already completed.

While mowing, some older boys were putting together a game of wiffle-ball at the dead-end across the street, so I ran in and got the boys ready and convinced Ken to head out with them and pitch. Good times! Everybody was out expending energy except for Corey, who really only enjoys water play. So after I finished mowing and the wiffle-ball game ended, I convinced Ken to blow up water balloons with me so that the boys could have a little water fun. Well, it took an hour to blow up those 250 water balloons, and about ten minutes for Ken, the boys, Anna and I to destroy every single one. We played a little catch with them, harassed some neighbors with them, and generally just threw them until they popped.

Now what??? "I'm going home, I haven't had dinner yet," Anna said, so I sent the boys in, looked at the clock and realized it was well past dinner time! Got some food going and started picking up the house, when someone in the front yard catches my eye... It was two little girls we'd attacked earlier as they went around the block on their scooters, and they had a bag of water-filled balloons. About six water balloons, actually. After they quickly completed their counter attack, I handed them a handful of water balloons and told them not to come back unless they were prepared.

Shortly after they left, I enlisted some neighbor boys from down the street. Gave them a handful of water balloons and sent them home to fill them up and await the girls return while I loaded up about 50 balloons of my own. Then we waited. Forever we waited, until I finally gave up and called the little girls and asked where the heck they disappeared to. Oh, they're coming, or so they said. Finally, after an hour or so, we see one girls' parents coming up the street. (Okay, good friends of ours coming over to hang out, but also to let us know the girls should be by shortly.)

And there they were! Wave one was on as the boys down the street attacked the unsuspecting girls. They were new to our water fights and threw them way too hard, but the girls survived and headed to our house. Wave two was short and sweet, and a little too disappointing. The adults hogged the balloons and went after each other while the kids argued over who pilfered whose balloons and blah, blah, blah. Water fight over.

The kids dispersed and left the adults on the porch to entertain each other. Suddenly there was a lame game of HORSE underway between four lame adults. That turned into two-on-two and a lot of beer bottles. Finally the air got too chilly, so we went inside with the kids. Then I got this crazy idea into my head that Anna should sleep over since she's had the boys overnight twice this summer. Then I said, "Allyson, you two have been getting along so well, why don't you stay over, too?" Their moms looked at me like I was crazy. "Might as well throw Sean (Allyson's little brother and Shannon's pal,) into the mix, too."

Sadly, I actually had to convince the kids' moms into going along with my idea, and by 10:00 it was just me and a house full of six kids. I split them into two groups, the youngest upstairs, the oldest downstairs. They were actually pretty good, the youngest group was all asleep by 11:20, while the older kids didn't wind down until after midnight. (They insisted it was two o'clock, but I was checking pretty regularly.) I fell asleep at 2:00 in the morning thinking it was quite the success.

Then I woke up at 6:30, because Sean had woken up. He wanted to wake up all the kids but I forcefully suggested that he quietly lay down and watch Tom and Jerry while everyone else slept. Yeah, it was really all for naught, because by 7:30 the girls were up, then the boys were up, so then I was up! Once I started moving around it became apparent that I have some bronchitis settling in and a massive sinus headache going on. Now it was going to be a long day!