Growing Up: Sleep Overs

Way back in the days before my age hit double digits....I remember spending the night at friends' houses.  I had one friend in particular who I stayed with a lot - her name was Abby.  We had so much fun when we had sleep overs.  I remember lots of outdoor play, dress up, Barbies, messing through her big sister's stuff, fun food, church, etc.  As we got older we would do stupid things...one time we did the prank call thing where we pretended to be telemarketers who were doing surveys on beans and weenies.

Seriously.

Now that I'm a parent the idea of a sleep over freaks me out.  We say the world has changed since we were kids.  I agree it has and I also disagree and think - no it has not... its just that we hear about bad stuff more because technology allows it.  We are more informed if you will.

Remembering my childhood, I really wanted my daughter to enjoy friends and welcome them into our homes and hope they would do that in return.  Then you realize that child of yours is just your heart running around outside of your body and you don't know a parent in that child's classroom well enough to say "sure my kid can go there"....

I would seriously hate for my child to have no memories of those silly little girl sleepovers.

My Diva started the same elementary school I went to this past year.  She went to first grade for reading and just happened to mention this sweet friend she had made in first grade.  After hearing her talk all about this kid I said, well what's her name.  She said her name was Gracie and I thought wait a second....

Gracie's mom was one of my closest friends back in those teenage and post high school days.  She'd been an excellent friend and I had missed her and her husband.  We had them over to swim and I inquired about us hosting a sleepover.

It took a month but we pulled it together and boy did those girls (and Little Man) have some fun!

Keys to a good sleepover:

1.  Air Mattress

2.  Bake something together

3.  Get a good movie (in our case The Lego Movie)

4.  Pray for no one to freak out and want to go home after 10PM

5.  Sit back and just smile at all the giggling