We've built a treehouse in our backyard this summer.  Except there's no tree.  It's just a little play house up on stilts -- but it sounds dumb to call it a "stilt-house," so I call it a treehouse.   Now, I can't take too much credit for the project, since it was Marci's idea, and it even ended up being assembled from a kit (not from scratch).  But all the same, it's pretty cool...

And last night, Elliot, Olivia, and I decided to christen it with a sleepover.

That's right, I volunteered to sleep in a tiny treehouse (so small that my legs had to stick out onto the balcony, in order for me to fit full-length).  It was a mix of insanity and idealism that caused me to go for the idea.  But in the end, I'm glad I did.  We spent the whole evening gathering supplies (sleeping bags, blankets, pillows, stuffed animals, flash-lights, batteries for the flash-lights, etc.).  And then, when it was time for bed (around eight o'clock in the evening), we tucked our pillows under our arms and headed out to the tree-house, dressed in our pajamas.

We spent time reading from books (finishing the last two chapters of "The Boxcar Children").  We told stories of our own invention.  We played around with the flashlights (to the point of annoyance).  And then we tried to go to sleep.

We tried.  Very briefly.

Personally, I think I actually could have done just fine, up there in the tree-house, for a single night.  But it ended up getting a little bit too dark for Elliot and Olivia (who typically have a night-light in their room).  And since I had padded the front-end of the evening with plenty of reminders like, "You know, it might not be the most comfortable sleeping arrangement -- so we can always plan to come back inside, whenever we feel like it"),  the kids decided fairly quickly and unanimously to transition to our regular beds after just a few minutes of tossing and turning and trying to get settled.

We came back in around a quarter to ten.  Just an hour and forty-five minutes after we had started.

But I'm not complaining.  I would actually say that it was pretty near to the ideal way of managing a treehouse sleepover.  All options were extended to the kids (i.e. I didn't have to be the "wet blanket").  We got to experience the fun of planning and preparing for such a wonderful adventure -- which is probably a disproportionate percentage of the fun that goes into any such adventure anyway.  We got to enjoy some special time in the treehouse together, with just the three of us.  The kids were ecstatic with the opportunity to stay up "way past" their normal bed-times and snuggle up with Dad for awhile.

But at the end of the night, I was able to get to sleep at the usual time, in my usual bed... feeling unusually satisfied.