In a wonderful fantasy world I live in, we get our boys in bed by 7:30 every night. In truth, it’s usually closer to 9:00 PM. They are fed and bathed by the time Daddy gets home from work but, Jim is the type of Daddy that wants to spend some time with them… and the boys love that time, too.

When Jim gets home, which is usually after dinner, the boys sit in the living room with him and have their bedtime snack of apples and milk (I still don’t understand how they mix those two… ew… but I digress…) Then, they head upstairs to brush teeth and have bed time stories. Most nights, however, silliness ensues the minute they get upstairs and, before I know it, all three of them are wrestling on my bed and screaming and giggling.

A couple weeks ago, the silliness started while the boys still happened to be downstairs just as it was getting dark and the living room curtains were still open. Jacob noticed the fireflies in the front yard. He was ecstatic! “Daddy, Mommy! What are THOSE?” So, we took both boys outside and we all caught lightening bugs for about thirty minutes.

Last night, Jacob asked if we could do that again but we were all so tired that we told him we’d do it again tomorrow. He was disappointed but didn’t put up a fuss about it. But, tonight, Jim got home from work a bit later than normal. They had their snack and then headed upstairs. As Jacob was lying in bed reading stories with Jim, he suddenly remembered the promise we made to him last night. “Daddy, we forgot to catch lightening bugs tonight!”  Daddy looked over at me and said, “A promise is a promise.”  Christopher heard that from his room and came running into Jacob’s room. “Are we going back outside, Mama?”  Who could say no to that??

We all went back downstairs, put shoes and socks on the boys and spent another half hour running around the front yard, catching lightening bugs.  They got into bed much later than planned and, I know this means it will be harder to get them out of bed for camp in the morning. But, they had the best time and we did a lot of laughing together.  We can always be late to camp. They won’t always want to go catch lightening bugs with us.

I know I make a lot of mistakes with my boys, as most parents do. None of us are perfect.  But, there is one rule of parenting that I stick to emphatically; I never make a promise to my boys I can’t keep. I thank the Lord that I married a man that feels the same way.