Juice boxes and mommy juice. by Corey.

I had every intention of having pictures for this post.  Until the playdate started and the scene was entirely too chaotic for me to even consider pulling out my camera.  So use your imaginations.

I've been to lots of playdates.  Ones with big groups.  Ones with small groups.  Ones where we show up in our pj's and ones where we exchange Christmas goodies.  I've hosted them, been to ones at the park, or a bouncy house.  I'm not an expert but I'm close. 

Let's be honest.  They are just as much for moms as they are for kids.  Your kids get that interaction thing that's so important to be a functioning member of society and you get to talk to another mom whose baby takes their diaper off before nap and who is equally mortified that their 3 year old hasn't ever eaten a vegetable.  It's like blogging.  It's therapy.

So with that in mind, and also feeling tired of the typical playdate where I let other kids destroy my house or I meet everyone at the playground, I went out on a limb.  I hosted a 'happy hour/ playdate'.  I did it on Thursday.  At 4 in the afternoon (that's really really close to 5, FYI).  I invited a lot of moms, really because I figured they might judge and most likely wouldn't come.  False.  No one judged and EVERYONE came.  Yep.  12 moms.  20+ children.  In. My. House.  Holy balls.
It was a blast.  Albeit a chatic one.  But everyone had fun.  The moms got to relax and the kids got to destroy my house.

Here's what I did to make it awesome.

Craft table.  I covered (twice) my dining room table and bought out the dollar store.  I bought door hangers and visors and foam letters and markers and stickers and pipe cleaners and voila!  A craft table! 

I moved toys around.  Where usually there's a plethora of stuff in our 12x12 playroom, I moved the mega blocks (which I hate BTW because they show up in random locations all over the house... I plan on depriving my kids of Legos for this reason) to the living room so there was a block center.  I moved the 'road rug' outside on the patio too so the boys had more room to play cars.

Outside.  We live in Florida.  It was 80 on Thursday.  So out front we had sidewalk chalk and bubbles.

And out back we had cars and ride on toys and fresh air. 

I asked the moms to bring either a snack or a bottle of wine.  We had plenty of both.  I got out goldfish, animal crackers, and pretzels and used little plastic cups for the kids to grab their snacks in.  Oh and I made these AMAZING cookies from Pinterest.  I cut up some veggies and some cheese.  Voila.  (That's two voila's, if you're counting.)  I used my plastic wine glasses because I hate drinking wine out of a solo cup and for that reason I have plastic wine glasses.  For playdates.

What I didn't do was get out our window crayons for everyone to draw on my sliders because it took too damn long to clean them the last time.   And I didn't worry about the mess.  Because there is going to be stuff everywhere anytime you have that many kids in your house.  They ran laps.  Played chase.  Dumped out bins upon bins of cars and random crap.  And had fun.  Lots of fun.

And so did we.  The end.
*a disclaimer. I am not suggesting that moms 'need' a drink.   Although somtimes I do NEED a drink.  Nor am I advocating that you imbibe. 

** Also. Everyone who attended the playdate lives in my neighborhood or seconds from it. Everyone had a drink over a two hour period. No one drove home with their kids in the backseat while they were puking out the front window.