Living Room Sleepover

One day, Ani was watching a movie (I can’t even remember which one now) that included a fort of some kind (tree fort?  living room fort?).  Obviously, the details escape me (or maybe we were reading a book?)….at any rate, it brought back memories of when I was a kid, and my brothers and I used to claim all available blankets, couch cushions, and the chairs for our kitchen table.  According to my memory (which apparently is better long term than short term), those forts were pretty darn cool….I even took my mom’s house plants and put them in the “windows” (i.e. the slatted backs of the chairs).   All of this developed into a promise to Ani to hold a special fort-building, Christmas-cookie-making, movie-watching, sleepover (we go all out). 

We got the cookies rolling….

…and then started on the fort as they chilled in the refrigerator.

Before

Judy was laughing as she took the pictures, since the angle of the sun made me appear like a fort-building angel.

Apparently even fort-building angels need duct tape…

Tada!  (Notice the plant outside our door...just like old times.)

Then it was time to decorate cookies. 

Our sprinkles came all the way from the Whitehall Store in Bellville, PA.  The pink sugar sprinkles—which I had brought especially for a certain pink-loving Little Fella— had burst in my bag on my way to the Plateau.  They were in every nook and cranny not only of the bag, but of every item in the bag.  I managed to salvage some…

We couldn’t find our Christmas-shape cookie cutters, but Judy made her own fancy-pants sprinkle stencil.

Tati Bobo came over to make things interesting.

She also joined us in the fort for a tickle fight and two episodes of the Cosby show.  (Ani’s choice for the movie, and we weren’t complaining.) 

Unfortunately, at four years old you don’t quite see that your awesome mother who has been a good sport about you ripping up her living room and making a mess in her kitchen should be allowed in your fort as well.

I had kind of hoped that Ani would forget about the “sleepover” part of our arrangement.  Yeah, right.  The child has the memory of an elephant (consequently, part of our time in the fort included her opening a little ornament that my mom had sent her—a pink elephant). 

So, I ended up spending the night in our little fort.  All things considered it didn’t go too badly…it didn’t fall in on us, and I only got a flailing arm flung in my face once (throw pillows come in very useful as barriers here).

See that white mass of blanket under the fort….that’s me.