We just survived a teenage boys sleepover

 "Why did you plan that, I'd never do it", said my team member on Friday morning when I sighed how I looked up against the weekend.
"Because sometimes you are optimistic like an idiot", I answered.

Weeks before we had asked Kabouter what he'd like to do as a birthday party and his answer was strangely simple and yet frightening at the same time: he wanted to have a sleepover with his friends at our home in the east of Belgium.   

The tricky part of a sleepover there is that you don't drive up and down just for the night: we usually spend part of our weekend there, so we'd have to entertain the children also during the day.  The advantage is that we automatically had a restriction due to the limited car places & mattresses we could fit on the floor. 

We got up that morning and I was fighting a sinus headache and I thoroughly regretted our decision but I feared I couldn't disappoint the group of children and also all their parents who had arranged the luggage and weekend plans for their children.   And so logged off asap after one of my meetings and rushed to the school gate to load up my car with children, as did Jan. 

As soon as we arrived our attic was taken over with the noisy crowd and I was amased by the noise they could make...not in fight etc but just due to enthusiasm they started to surpass each other voices constantly during play. 

After dinner and birthday gifts, there was time for a movie and the house got quiet again. 

The night was quite ok ...Everybody was in bed well in time and I guess Jan and I were so tired that we slept quite early but I also have the illusion that the upstairs floor was dozed off at a reasonable hour. If not, they sure were quiet.  The wake up was much too early for me but they still kept themselves relatively quiet and Jan got up and I managed to turn around and sleep in :p.   Hahaha, I was Kabouter gratefull that he had confirmed to his friends that I have a terrible mood if I am tired.  Must have sound threatening. 

The weather predictions had been awefull, but we had received the bulk of the rain at night and it was time to get all this young energy out of the door.  So it was time to take them to the walk that we had prepared with Kabouter a few weeks before. To my relief they all followed enthusiastically and participated in the assignments that I had prepared for them. 

With some more playtime at home and a pancake break , our 24 hours were over and it was time to drive back home.  And to my relief, it was very quiet in my car :p.   All in all the sleep-over went by much easier than I had anticipated.