The Castle

We have turned our dining table into a castle! Jay has this thing about castles—I don’t know what made him start liking them, but he likes castles. So this is not a fort. It’s a castle. Normally I like to clean up all toys and playtime clutter in the family room at the end of each day so I can have a few hours to regain my sanity before I go to bed. But this fort—I mean castle—has been up all week, and it hasn’t bothered my inner Zen.

I'm a tidy person and I like a neat room, but for some reason I love having all of the chairs shoved against the wall and multi-colored sheets draped all over our table. It's such a homey kind of clutter.

I put our plastic table cover on top so we can still use the table without disturbing the fort. I find that I get a lot more sewing done if I just leave my sewing machine out, and it’s conveniently heavy enough to keep the sheets from slipping off the table.

“Sleeping”

Ok, that’s all I have to say about the castle-fort. BUT, I did want to update you on how my “wake-up-before-kids-to-start-day-right” scheme is going. I’m about 50/50 at it for lots of reasons:

1. I refuse to set my alarm earlier than 6am (plenty of time for that when early morning seminary starts).
2. Jay and Rose are NOT consistent waker-uppers—some mornings they wake up at 5:45am, and other days they sleep in till nearly 7! So half the time they’re up before my alarm anyways.
   
   
   Jay likes to sit in our bed with a pile of stuffed animal-kids and have a “party.” And no, we do not live in a prison cell—we just haven’t decorated our bedroom yet.
   
   
3. Remember how I liked the idea of Jay and Rose finding me happily reading my scriptures in the morning instead of finding me groggily pasted to the bed? Well after a few mornings of finding me cheerfully awake and out in the family room, Jay started asking me if I would go back to bed so he could have a “party on the bed.” He actually LIKES it when I’m laying in bed like a zombie in the morning. So much for my visions that mornings with an awake, alert mama are better than mornings with an exhausted mama.

I feel like a myth-buster or something. The hard part is I still want to be up before the kids for ME and my quiet time, but since I know it’s ONLY for me now, and that they don’t care if I’m up or not, that makes it harder to do. Why is that? Probably because sleep is always an easier option at 6am.

Conclusion A: forts with blankets are awesome.

Conclusion B: It’s ok to “sleep in” sometimes.