EventPro Magazine - Spring 2015 EventPro Magazine Spring 2016 | Page 32

Life’s An Event
Mothering is the Necessity of Event Planning
By Angie Simonson
Show me a mom, and I’ll show you an event planner.
What’s that old saying... Mothering is a the necessity of
event planning?
It’s starts innocently with little family birthday parties,
and then as your children enter school it balloons
into full blown friend parties and sleep-overs, and no
matter how hard you try to avoid them, you’ll get roped
into planning garage sales and fundraisers, or end of year
parties for school groups and your kids’ sports teams.
It gets a bit overwhelming. Not to mention costly. While
you can’t always dodge the PTA president or sports
booster club required participation, you can manage
the birthday craziness at home with a little multi-event
tasking.
Let me start by saying I have four kids. They are all less
than 2 years apart, and our house just barely holds us and
the junk we hoard. Inviting a dozen or more children

over multiple times per year is enough to make me want to
home school. But since I don’t have the patience, or grasp
of advanced math to make that a realistic option, I made a
deal with my kids - we’ll have one party each year, and we’ll
make it a doozy.
So began our annual “Simonson Summer Party”. We invite
my kids’ friends with their entire family (which frees me
from too much supervision). Many of the families have kids
the same ages as mine, so this works out well. We clean up
our big front yard and garage. We buy lots of brats, dogs
and buns, and ask guests to bring a side or dessert to share.
We provide the non-alcoholic beverages, our guests bring
their own booze if they so choose. We have a bonfire with
s’mores, and each year come up with a few activities for the
kids.
The first year we did this the temperature was 60
degrees and rainy in the middle of July. The grown-ups
shivered in the garage while the kids ran wild in the rain.
Everyone had fun. The following year was really hot, I made