Let's celebrate with a Chablis and 7-up

If you are like me, you love a good Girls Night Out. I have the absolute best friends in the world and have decided that I just don’t spend enough time with them. We try our best to get together every other week, but it is difficult. Between the nine of us we have a total of 8 husbands, 2 ex-husbands, 28 kids, and umpteen animals.

As you can imagine, scheduling often becomes difficult.

I often think back to the time when I was newly married and had no kids. Scheduling a girls night out was so much easier then. It was a matter of one email or a couple of quick phone calls.

But, now, it’s not so easy.

Now it involves umpteen emails, bargaining between spouses, the fight to get good sitters, and emotional back room shenanigans just to get a date on the calendar. Quite frankly, by the time a date and place has been set, I’m utterly exhausted.

Usually the need for a girls night out is initiated by one woman in the group who really, and I mean really, needs to get out for a few hours of laughter. The initial contact is quite often an email with a mere suggestion of a get together (read: you bitches better join me because I NEED to get away from my kids for awhile).

Then, the volley begins. Back and forth, back and forth trying to select the perfect date when most of us can attend. This email volley continues until a true date can be agreed upon. Once everyone is copied on the email the frantic phone calls begin to find sitters, convince husbands that we need to have drinks with our girls, or bribe our older children with money to watch their younger siblings.

We then spend days anticipating the evening. We find ourselves longing for the connect, the giggling, the support and the pee your pants laughter that will surely take place.

My group of girls often gathers at someone’s house in our pajamas. This way there is no pressure to get pretty and possibly annoy those around us at a nice restaurant. Because, I don’t know about you, but we are often loud and probably obnoxious to those that are not a part of our group. And the pajama party…best invention every for a girls night out.

Gentlemen, get your minds out of the gutter, we are not all in our sexiest lingere, having pillow fights.

But the funny thing is, no matter how much we need to spend time together, or want to be around one another, it always seems to be an early night. We gather with high hopes of a long late night, but the reality of it is that usually by 9pm we are all yawning and exhausted from the long days. Our eyes are twitching from sleep deprivation, several conversations have already begun with, “Julie, why do you always seem to date the losers?” and we are already dreading the early morning alarm clocks.

We are out the door before the sun sets, and the next day I still feel as though I have just taken part in several games of flippy cup and beer pong(I’m still shocked that one vodka on the rocks makes me feel like a novice drinker in the morning). But we somehow manage to still be grateful that we were able to get away for a few short hours…we deserve to have fun, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not like it used to be anymore. My life nowadays, consists of being awakened by my alarm at 6am, hitting the snooze an average of 2-3 times, and running frantically into Hamilton and Gibson’s bedrooms trying to awaken two exhausted boys from a sound sleep. Because of this, I know that the days of people-watching and guy-scoping of the bar scene is pretty much moot. Plus, my girls are all married…they don’t want to be subjected to my sorry life. After all, I don’t want to scare them away from our friendship.

But still, the next time someone suggests a girls night out, I am all over it like white on rice. even though the white on rice feels like a much older, divorced mom of two kids version of myself. Because there is a certain satisfaction in putting on my glasses and favorite pajamas to enjoy a kid free, fun filled 3 hours of laughing, crying, giggling and just letting ourselves go in the company of those that love us unconditionally!

Cheers to the next girls night out!