The Price Paid

This evening we had over for dinner the family of a girl in Ava's dance group. It was yet another lovely evening in which the kids ran around doing who-knows-what (as long as they're not hurting each other or my house I interfere as little as possible), Ben had some man-time with another dad, and I got to have some quiet conversation with another adult with few interruptions. This was all well and good... except we were having such a great time it was about 8:45pm by the time they left our house. To be clear, this is 45 minutes after my daughters are usually in their beds with the lights out. So needless to say that while Ava was very agreeable and cooperative with going straight to bed, the younger two both melted down fairly quickly. At one point I was in Molly's room with her screaming and leaning on my shoulder while I could hear Ben in the next room with a near-hysterical Jocelyn. I couldn't help but start to laugh. Because it was complete craziness, but I was okay with that being the price we had to pay for a nice evening with friends. Sometimes a few extra minutes sharing stories and laughs are worth the tears of overstimulation and exhaustion.