Overnight guests and the madwoman in the attic.

The boys eating breakfast

Last night Dots and I attended a concert at our church given by the American Boychoir. Their performance was beautiful (I especially enjoyed their encore which was a delightful rendition of The Yellow Rose of Texas). Afterward we hosted four of the boys as overnight guests in our home.

Our guests ranged in age from 10 to 13 and were from New Jersey, Tennessee and France. They were very polite and appreciative, and we enjoyed their brief stay with us.

I evicted Hockey Boy from his room and made him sleep on the sofa on the third floor so that two of the boys could use his beds. The other two boys I put in our downstairs guest room.

Our guest room is regrettably located directly beneath Vivian's bedroom. Usually Vivian sleeps pretty well at night, but sometimes she wakes up and gets on her computer, puts a movie in her TV/VCR or plays in the little playhouse in her room. This is not an issue unless we have guests {ahem}.

Last night it was well past Vivian's bedtime when I arrived home with the boys. Their curfew was 30 minutes after getting to their host's home so I didn't have a whole lot of time to interact with them and thus never told them a thing about Vivian.

Well, wouldn't you know that twice during the night I heard Vivian up and messing around in her room. The first time (around 2 a.m.) I went in and found her opening all of the shutters in her room, declaring, "It is morning time!" I tried to explain to her that it was not morning but rather the middle of the night and that she needed to be quiet, but she didn't much get my drift. I finally coaxed her back into bed and turned out her lights. Several hours later I heard the familiar sounds of PBSkids.com wafting down the hall. I plodded back to Vivian's room, unplugged her computer speakers and attempted once again to convince her to go to sleep. This time she was having no part of getting back in bed. Not wanting to cause even more of a ruckus, I left her playing happily on her computer. When it was time to wake the boys up at 6:45, Vivian was asleep, but I have no idea for how long.

The boys seemed to have slept well and did not mention hearing Vivian during the night. I fervently hope they heard nothing lest their experience seem like a scene from Jane Eyre!