Treehouse Sleepover

In 2003, my dad decided he would start building a tree house for us while the rest of us were in Finland. When people ask him,
'How did you build that??' he just says, 'One step at a time.'
That's even a song by Jordan Sparks. When we got back from Finland, the floor and the base of it all was pretty much covered, but that was just the beginning. Sam, my oldest brother, is really into building things. He built his own bed, a catapult, and even a potato cannon. Click here to read more about my fun with the potato cannon. :-) Anyway, he really wanted to help, and we all helped. Well, except for mom. She watched us. She was like our audience. This was the beginning of a wonderful tree house.

That summer, we continued to work on the tree house. We measured wood, cut wood, nailed wood, there was a lot of wood involved. Luckily, I don't think we got many blisters. We went to the hardware store several times each day, mostly to pick up wood, and maybe some nails. We also ended up getting several signs, like 'PUSH' for a light that you push the center and it will come on. 'PULL' for the rope that you need to pull in order to open the window. 'PLEASE USE OTHER DOOR' for the emergency escape hatch. The only problem with that hatch is (1) It's a bit difficult to open (2) It's in a weird place so if you jump, you'd end up smashing into a piece of wood and part of the tree.

The windows were very interesting. The entire tree house has 8 windows. 2 of them have ropes attached to them that go up into a pulley, and the other end of the rope has a 25 pound weight attached to it. We built shelves for these weights to rest on when the windows were closed. When the weight is hanging, you can push the window open as far as it can go, and it will stay there because of the wait hanging down on it. It's one of those windows where the hinges are on the top. It's similar to those flapping doors that dogs and cats use to get in and out of the house. Another window, same basic method as the last two, has a rope attached to it, which is attached to a pulley. The other end of the rope doesn't have anything on it. For this window, you would pull the rope, causing the window to open, and then you would wrap the rope tightly around a metal thing to hold the window open in place. Then we have our 2 'N' windows. They got their name because the wood is put in a formation from the inside that looks like an N. The last three are also part of the 'N' window family. These ones are much simpler than the last ones, but are smaller. The hinges are on the side, and it's a simple push open, and it will stay open. All of our windows have locks. You know, just in case someone might want to sneak in. Heehee.

One of the hardest things about building this tree house was trying to build around the branches. We cut no branches in the making of this tree house. We just had to cut large holes in our wood in the places where the branch would go in order for it to work.

Believe it or not, this tree house has 2 floors. That's right. You heard me. (Well, not really 'heard me', since you're reading this rather than me actually telling you, it's more like, 'Yeah, you read it.') Anyway, yes, it does have two floors. But the thing is, the second floor is more like an attic/loft space. You can't really stand up in it, unless you are a couple feet tall. We made a ladder for it, hatch and everything. Now, this loft is unique for multiple reasons. (1) Because the floors don't go all the way across the tree house like a complete ceiling. Mostly, yes, it does. But right where the 2 simple working 'N' windows are, a couple feet of an opening from the loft. So let's say you're in the loft, lying down. You can just drop your head down a little and see the bottom floor! So it's pretty cool. We have a picture where my oldest brother, Sam, is peeking over the edge of the floor and he's all, 'Hey people! I'm hanging from the loft!' (2) Because it's the only part (for now, at least) in the tree house that actually has carpeting. Yes, carpeting. You read it. The only problem with that, is sometimes smart little squirrels climb up and scurry around in our tree house when we aren't there. (Which is quite often, actually.) They like to chew on the ends of our ropes and the carpets, making these big clumps of carpeting. When you get a lot together, it looks like the fluff came right of the sheep. Yeah, that fluffy stuff on sheep. That's what the chewed up ends look like. So every now and then, we have to get in every nook and crany of the loft, around the branches, and trim the carpets. So that sounds a bit odd.. 'Hey, honey, I'm going to trim the carpets!' But you know what? It's just one of the things you need to do if you happen to own a tree house with carpeting. (3) When we sleep in the tree house, (more about that one coming soon to the next paragraph) some lucky person will get to sleep up there. Just imagine that. Sleeping about twenty feet from the ground on carpeting in this tree house with no heating, just you and your sleeping bag and the little battery powered light over your head. (4) On the end where the floors are attached to the walls, there is a little window that you push open, only this time, the hinges are on the bottom. So say you're sleeping in the loft, and you wake up all of a sudden. It's morning, and you can tell. You open up the little window. How convenient is that? Very, I'd say.

We painted it around 2004, Brick red, the same color as our house. It's our mini house! Here's a pic of our progress:

We love to paint things! Especially on high ladders.

Starting in 2003, (that same year we built it), my family started to sleep in the tree house. Well, except for mom. Once again, she's like our audience. There isn't really room for five in the tree house. You probably could cram one more person in, but it would not be comfortable. In 2003, let's see... I was about 5 or 6 years old. Pretty cool adventure for me, since I was so tiny! Getting ready for the tree house sleep over took a lot of work. Before even thinking about getting our sleeping junk up in the fort, we needed to clean it all out. Sweep it, and of course, our 'trimming the rugs'. We need to dust here and there, and sweep everywhere. (Ha! That rhymes.) So it's clean now, right? So now you are probably wondering how we get our sleeping bags and all that jazz up in the tree house. We use the most inefficient way you could possibly think of. We don't have any pulleys, no baskets, we don't even attempt to carry them up through the hatch. (1) Because the hatch would be too small for our large sleeping things. (2) There is no way we could carry my dad's insanely huge- and insanely heavy sleeping bag up the ladder. (3) We need all of our hands to climb a ladder. So what do we do? We throw them. We have two large windows on one side of our tree house. Here's how it works: Somebody goes up into the tree house, (this year it was me and my friend, Annika.) and stands in the window, ready to catch anything. The rest of the people down below, are trying to get the stuff to us. Catching it, in my opinion, is MUCH easier then trying to throw a 10 pound sleeping bag 13 feet in the air. All we have to do is hope it comes near us and grab on to it. Here's a picture of my dad trying to throw his large heavy sleeping bag up.

This is my dad, trying to throw his heavy sleeping bag up. Let's hope he makes it.


You see those two blue and green rolled up things in the corner of the picture? Those are the pads that we sleep on. We only use them for the bottom floor sleepers though, because the loft has carpeting, like I mentioned earlier. They are very helpful because if you didn't have them, you'd wake up and have your back against hard wood- with your sleeping bag in between, but that isn't much support. You'd think that they are the easiest ones to get up there because they are so light. Well guess what? You are WRONG. Those things are the hardest thing to throw up. You can get it up in the air easy- sort of. When it's up in the air, it unwinds and acts like a parachute. So you need to get it really rolled up seriously tight- we could use rope, or rubber bands of some sort, but like I said, this is the worst way to do this task.

I was really sad when my brothers didn't want to sleep up in the tree house- one said because he's afraid of heights, which I don't blame him for. The other one-- uh.. I don't really know why he didn't go up. But imagine how excited I was when my dad said I could invite a friend over to sleep in the tree house. The sleeping in the tree house excitement I was used to- I got that every year. But I was more excited than ever this time- because this was the first time ever that some one had come over and slept in it. !!! I climbed down the ladder as fast as I could, sprinted over to the porch, snatched the phone from the little plastic holder, and dialed my friends number. Several minutes later, our tree house sleep over was scheduled. I couldn't wait.

I already explained above the whole process of the 'sleeping bag and other sleeping needs transporting technique' to you, which is what was next, so I will fast forward to when we have all the junk in the house. The tree house. This was so cool!

We set down our pads, got our sleeping bags in order, water, bug spray, all those outdoorsy things. My friend and I slept down below on the bottom floor, the main floor of the whole wonderful piece of art. My dad slept in the loft for the first time- pretty exciting night for him! He got the comfortable carpeting and the little window by his head. The only thing I find obnoxious about the loft, is that if you wake up, you have a large chance of slamming your head on one of the pieces of wood on the very low ceiling above you. Aaahh.. the birds are chirping... it's a wonderful morning....(as you rise up out of your sleeping bag)...... SMACK! Now you have a large bruise on your forehead. Teehee!

Since my friend doesn't have cable, we watched an episode of iCarly on my iPod. I have this pillow speaker- which the name is pretty self explanatory. It's a pillow, and an iPod speaker. We used that for sound. We stayed up until 10:00 PM. That's pretty late for me, but not too too late. It was a bit buggy, so we had to keep squirting bug spray all over ourselves. Finally we fell asleep for a couple hours at a time. I woke up. Checked my iPod for the time. 3:00 AM! It certainly wasn't time to get up yet. I still had about 5 more hours to go! Back to sleep. I woke up again. Checked my iPod for the time. 6:30 AM. A little early.. so I doze off for another hour. This time, I really did wake up, and actually sat up this time rather than feeling around for my iPod in the dark. I'm glad I didn't bonk my head on anything.