A night for the ages

Here's a fun fact: Chad and I wanted to skin ourselves alive and jump out of a second story window this last Sunday.

Yes, yes we did. We had THE wildest, most unexpectedly fun night on Saturday. In fact you couldn't even classify the outing as one of the "night" variety, it truly was a "wee hours of the morning" type of event. Here's how it went on the night that our parenting duties ceased to exist . . .

One of Chadly's friends from work was having a going-away party up in LA at what we thought was going to be a club (which made me nervous! A club? What does one wear to a club when they are going to be surrounded by their husband's work friends?! Jeans? A dress? WHAT?!), which luckily turned out to just be a bar. So we made the 45 minute drive up the 5 freeway, exited Fairfax (FAIRFAX!), drove another twenty minutes and finally arrived, only to find all of the familiar Wells Fargo people standing outside due to overcrowding. Welp, they sure as heck were right about that. We took one step inside to say sayonara to his pal and were immediately bamboozled by young bar goers. I mean, I've literally never been in a more crowded place in my life. It was outrageous.

While all of this was taking place, we had in the back of our minds that our friend was celebrating his birthday in none other than Newport Beach, a good million miles away from where we were. However, after surveying the current situation at the nice hour of 10:45 pm, we decided to forget about LA, throw our inhibitions to the wind and jam down to Newport!

So! We only arrived in bar-town at the decent time of 11:50 pm. Totally normal. We immediately jumped in line to get into the madness that was Rudy's where our circle of awesome friends were hoot-hollerin' it up, and had a little out-of-body experience: There we were, two bambinos down, possibly more to go, waiting in line to go into this raucous bar with people who were either our age or younger! It was outrageous in an awesome, weird sort of way!

Anyway, we made it in and found our people who were, in that moment, the most wonderful portrait of amazingness THIS lady has ever seen. They were EXACTLY what the doctor ordered: our crowd! Chad and I were immediately showered in those wild things called "beers" and talking a thousand miles a minute about what the heck everyone has been up to over the last few months! We all discovered that virtually no one has met Kota and that Carter will be more of a junior groomsmen by the time the men of the group hit up Harry Winston, which had me laughing like a hyena!

Anyway, we . . . stayed until . . . the bar . . . closed! Yes! It was 2:00 am when we left and then guess what we did. GUESS! We piled into a cab with a humongous crew and got dropped off at our friends' apartment! What?! Yes! That's what happened! Chad and I spent the night out! Isn't that outrageous?!

Now in regular world, this would signify bed time, but oh, no! Conveniently there was a good ole' fashion bottle of almond champagne waiting to be opened. So, naturally, we continued the merry making, advice giving in the form of "now wait, let me get this straight. You have work tomorrow morning? And you're still awake? What?! What planet are we on?", and more catching up.

Finally, I took a quick glance at the clock and realized it was 4:20 in the morning! IN THE GOSH DARN MORNING! At that point I put the kabosh on the still-lively conversation I was having in the interest of getting some shut eye.

Waking up can be likened to the Grimm Reaper paying me a visit.

But here's the thing: It was so much fun, I wouldn't have traded in that hellish, multi-hour-long hangover for anything! It was a night not of alcoholism run rampant, although it would have appeared that way, but of reconnecting. It left me feeling lucky beyond all doubt to have met such a great group of people, supportive to no end.

Anyway, cheers to Grandma's who offer to babysit, driving all over Southern California, consuming more liquid in one night than in the previous 4 years, chatting with our Fullerton wonderfuls and then wanting to gauge our eyeballs out for all hours bathed in sunlight! Woohoo!