Repost of the campout rules

Theoretically, Nick is flying back in at about midnight tonight. Alth0ugh with what WRAL is calling, "very impressive amounts of rain" falling, I am having my doubts. He may be spending YET ANOTHER night in the freezing cold Miami airport.

As always, I hate being apart from him. It's particularly hard during this weird time of flux. I guess I am extra needy... (just what every man wants, huh?) I make no bones about it-- I am kind of a nightmare to live with I think. Yes, I do have redeeming qualities (I'd like to think.) But I am a nightmare.

I am getting off-topic.

So the big kids and I are having camp out without dad. Although Nia has made up his bed on the couch should he get back. We finished up the Barbie movie of the night-- tonight was "Swan Lake." Nico is seriously getting into these Barbie flicks and yeah, something just doesn't sit right about that. He started dancing Swan Lake tonight in perfect time with Barbie. I feel like I am robbing him of the joys of machine noises and screeching tires, superheros and potty humor. Call me sexist. I am fine with that. But I need to work on not letting Nia always strong-arm her brothers into HER pic and let them watch Cars every now and then. But that's basically it. The only real "boy" movie we own. The Mangine family is on a spending freeze because of our ridiculously high tax bill that we did not anticipate. (Yeah, btw-- the adoption tax credit is a FARCE if you're self-employed! Ask me about THAT someday.) So it looks like Barbie is going to win out more often than not...

Back to the topic at hand. Lately the campout rules have gotten a little bit lax. So tonight I wanted to remind them of the real, true, original rules. So I dug up this post from August of 2007, just two weeks after Nico came home.

So, in case any of you want to start your own camp out, here are the rules:
-no talking
-no singing
-no whispering
-no laughing
-no making any noise
-no standing
-no sitting
-no kneeling
-no kicking your feet all around
-no touching anything

Here is what you CAN do during camp out--
-Lie quietly in your bed and go to sleep.
OR, if you can't get to sleep--
-Lie still (quietly) until morning

It's really fun. :) And if they complain tell them "that's fine if you don't want to do campout."