this is why I won't make it big

Monday night found the Emery family running into our bedrooms to drag out quilts and heavy books. At the last second, we decided to build a blanket fort. Because it was family night. And because it was cold outside. And because, hello, blanket fort.

It was a pretty hectic ten minutes, filled with all the shouting that building a blanket fort requires. "Bring me a heavy book!" "We need more chairs!" and "Where did the Christmas lights go?" followed by an intense philosophical discussion about whether or not to use the kitchen broom for added height (when all you have is a short couch, say yes to the kitchen broom). After a few more minutes of craziness and one burst of panic when we found the baby chewing on the Christmas lights (Seriously, all she wanted to do is eat the lights. It's going to be a problem when the tree goes up.), our fort was officially made.

We spent a lot of time in the fort that night, crawling in and out of it, lounging around, and wondering if blanket forts had always been so cramped? ;) Then I attempted to take a few pictures, which turned out spectacularly terrible, if I do say so myself. Tent lighting is a low-light situation I have zero experience in, especially when I'm relying on only one strand of lights. And then Sam looked up pictures of cool blanket forts on his phone, and looking at those pictures compared to the ones I was trying to take made me laugh out loud.

So here we are in our grubby sweatpants with the terrible lighting and the kitchen broom sticking up in the middle of our fort. It's NOT the cutesy, well-lit, staged blanket fort picture you've probably seen on Pinterest. It's an Emery-style blanket fort. And even though our type of fort will never make it big on any social media site, I like it best out of all the blanket fort pictures I've ever seen.

Because it's ours. And those grubby sweatpant-wearing people? They're my people.