Every year for about 14 years I have had a potluck party in
March called the Women’s Party. It started out because we all had young
children and never got a night off. The rules we had when we first started were.
1) You have to buy
the food that you’re bringing to the party already made and bring it in its original
container. (In other words no work and no talking about recipes, not that I
have a problem sharing recipes I do it all the time. But I just wanted to have
my friends share there lives, not there recipes.) This rule had an interesting
side effect. We learned where in our town we could get good deli food and take
out.
2) You’re not allowed to go home before your kids are in
bed.
3) You can invite your friends too. (Every year new faces
show up and different combinations of friends come. Keeping the party ever
changing)
These three simple rules make for a really fun party. Everyone
catches up with each other and meets new friends. My family, all boys were
banned to the upstairs with pizza or they went out for fast food, which made a
fun tradition for my husband and boys. Their only complaint has been how loud
the party gets, but when you put that many women in one house all talking it
does get loud.
Over the years we have weathered lots of problems together, celebrated
lots of achievements, changed things in our community for the better. We’ve now
seen many of our kids grow up and move out leaving us with empty nests, but we
have each other which help fill some of the emptiness and give us strength to
look for new passions and new directions. Also we can catch up on what everyone’s
kids are doing out in the world,
which has been so interesting and fun to hear about.
The new rule change is, we don’t have to go home when are
kids are in bed, we couldn’t possibly stay up that late…
