I knew I loved Brattleboro

This weekend we visited our awesome friends in Brattleboro, Vermont. There was a birthday party for my friend's husband, attended by about 20 adults and 10 kids, so the Peanut was beside herself with glee. As always happens when we get together with these people, the Peanut and our friends' two little girls ran amok for the entire weekend, scattering stuffed animals and crayons and approximately 50 million My Little Pony figurines in their wake. There were many wardrobe changes ("Look what I found in my summer clothes drawer! I'm putting on my Easter dress!") and dramatic performances ("Look at us -- we're ballerina fairies!")

When, at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night, the Peanut and the other 3-year-old announced that they were tired and wanted to go to bed, we grown-ups were actually naive enough to believe they meant it. "They've worn themselves out. They'll crash now because the sugar's worn off," we said.

Finally at midnight, after each of us had made about 50 trips upstairs to bellow, "That's it! NOW you girls have to get to sleep!!" there was silence, when our friends' little girls both crashed in the older girl's room, and the Peanut declared that after all that she wanted to sleep with me and Mr. Fraulein. At which point she got in bed between us, kicked us in the head for 20 minutes, and then went to sleep.

Ten minutes later it was 7 a.m., and the Peanut's presence was requested: the Moose Parade that all the girls had been planning the night before was about to get underway. (When you live in Vermont, apparently you end up with a lot of stuffed animal, uh, mooses.) So she bounded out of bed like she'd been sleeping for 12 hours, and they all started thundering around the house once again.

So all in all it was another excellent Brattleboro weekend, complete with a pictureque light snowfall, which we watched from our friends' dining room as we ate breakfast yesterday morning.

And then this morning I read Bob Cesca's blog and saw this, which only confirms the general fabulousness of Brattleboro.