My 11 year old daughter had a sleepover Friday night. Since her birthday is close to Christmas, we try to to let her celebrate later so the attention is on her. So she had two friends over and stayed up all night with lots of noise, laughter and food.

I decided to stay awake because there’s just too much trouble that 3 tween girls can get into unsupervised. I’m glad that I did. I can’t tell you how many times I had to get up to tell them to be quiet because my husband had to sleep. He had work on Saturday. I had to tell them to stop eating at one point too because I was afraid they would get sick. That’s a first for me!

I was so tired at one point that I considered shining floodlights on them thinking maybe that would keep them quiet, or at least remind them to be quiet when they started yelling. When it was time for my husband to get up for work, I just had to go to bed. One of the girls was being picked up at 7 AM so I figured one hour of sleep would be fine.

The next thing I knew I heard knocking at the door. It was as if emergency lighting was shining in my eyes. Did the girls hear? Of course not! I explained to the mother that I had just fallen asleep and that her daughter was ready. Was she? No! After that fiasco, my daughter and her friend were told to go to bed. The party was over.