The nightmare shower

Have you ever wanted to pull your hair out?  Or run out of your own house to scream your head off?  No, seriously!  I couldn't even try to make up what I'm going to tell you.  For.  Real.

I offered to let someone throw a double baby shower at my home on Saturday night.  They were thinking of having it at the church, but I thought that wasn't intimate enough so I offered my home since one of the girls was my friend.

It was a great motivation to get my house in order.  Well, I do have company coming the next three weekends so a perfect home would be nice.  Anyway, I painted two tables, stripped and stained another, painted my kitchen and got new accessories, got some new succulents for my living room, something new above the fireplace and got my carpets cleaned.

I don't want to write down every detail, but the things that had me ready to run down the street screaming and wanting to shout out to the neighbors, "You'd have to see this zoo to believe it" are...

1.  Mixing lemonade in my kitchen sink and then putting food coloring in them so that one is pink for the girl baby and one is blue for the blue baby.  Seriously?  Who in the world does that??  Who serves food coloring drink at someone else's home?  I'm getting riled up again writing this.

2.  I'm merely having the shower at my house.  Nothing more.  But then as people arrive I'm supposed to welcome them, have an opening prayer, conduct the games, tell them when dinner is served, when to open gifts, etc.

3.  One of the women that the shower was for brought her two little boys unexpectedly.  So I called down little g that was banned to the upstairs for the duration of the shower since children don't go to showers, to play with them upstairs.  Next thing I know, over ten children from the age of 4-10 come to the shower and without any parental supervision run wild throughout the house jumping on couches, running up and down the stairs, peeing on the floor in B's room, trapesing around with food and drink that has food coloring in it.

4.  Dinner arrives an hour and a half late.  And not enough of it.  So, while I'm conducting a game with my left hand, I'm reaching in the pantry with my right hand after they've asked me if they can make some rice to help the food stretch.  I see the can of refried beans and I offer those as well.  They take me up on it and then ask where the pans are, if I have any oil, or an onion, while I'm still conducting a game with my left hand, and my eyes are on kid watch crossing my fingers that nothing is getting ruined too badly.

5.  I was assigned two games.  I don't know why I'm always assigned the games.  Hate them!  They're embarrassing to me.  Anyway, I did my games praying that they hadn't done them fifteen times before.  I had five winners each game and they all wanted to know who got the prize.  Well, someone else was in charge of the prizes and brought two for my two games.  In my cute, somewhat fake smile on my face, I told them I'd figure out the prize thing later.  Who gives a crap about a dumb prize?

6.  The last shower they had, had about fifteen women attend it.  They weren't expecting anymore than that.  Well, about twenty five women and ten children later, I had scraped up every single chair that I owned.  No big deal really.  But while I was gathering chairs from the garage, I was also conducting that game with my left hand and checking on the rice and beans too.  It was absolutely loud chaos.

7.  There was a table that resembled all the shower tables on Pinterest lately.  It had cute little boxes of sticky kettle corn, cupcakes with mounds of crisco-y frosting and lots of food coloring, candy bars and the lemonade with food coloring.  It was a free for all throughout the party.  Including the kids.  They went everywhere with everything.  Lots of sticky kettle corn up stairs in the girls room.  I was just so happy when I saw that.

8.  After five hours.  Yes I sure did say five hours, my friend sat on the stairs just before leaving and asked me, "So what is the biggest difference between our showers and your showers?"  I then said, "Kids.  We never have kids at our showers."  Not so sure it sunk in because she giggled after I said that.

Needless to say, I collapsed in bed that night.  No brushing of the teeth.  Bra thrown to the side of the bed.  Flat out, passed out.

I ran upstairs to the hideout room and proclaimed to the family loud and clear, "Do NOT ever let me do that again!!"

After a couple of days, I rethought the whole thing.  I would totally do it again.  I love having people in my home.  I love playing the host.  But, I only like children at my home when I invite them and parents should have a clue as to what their children are doing.

My entertaining motto?  Let's have a blast when we're together.  I don't care if the house gets trashed, if we spill all over the place or if the kids run back and forth, it can all be cleaned up afterwards.  And, I want everyone to feel comfortable in my home.

That night was so crazy that I literally didn't have two seconds to even suggest to have the kids come down to the tile to eat their treats.  Anyway, it's documented and if I'm ever in that kind of a situation again, I will recognize it, and make some changes immediately.