The Best Way to Pull Off a Group Date and Celebrate Parents
This post is sponsored by Culver’s, but all experiences, and opinions on the best way to pull off a group date and celebrate parents are my own!
I’ve always looked at good parents with a lot of respect, it’s a full-time 24/7 job that never ends. Those who seem to do it well and pull off any other aspect of their life earn a lot of gold stars and respect in my book!
Long before we had kids our number one request was for ideas on how couples who are parents can still date, and can still enjoy quality time particularly when they have kids who are difficult to leave, or they can’t find/afford a babysitter. I don’t think we even had the slightest understanding of the struggle until we became parents ourselves.
But I’m so excited to share something we just figured out that works so well, and is a really great way to enjoy a group date with your friends, to have a lot of quality time, and to make a babysitter an easy and affordable experience.
Let me back and up and say I’ve been so lucky to have some of the greatest friends who are all married to really amazing guys. I look at these couples as incredibly good people who have worked so hard in school, in business, and in life. They are all parents of three or four children, and they’ve all loved and supported me through infertility and through becoming a mom a little later than I wanted to. In addition, all these amazing ladies own their own businesses, many run successful blogs, and they all make motherhood look easy raising truly amazing kids while they juggle it all.
I love that they all have great relationships with their husbands, and do their best to make date nights and quality parent time happen often. As much as we all love to get together with our families, it inevitably ends up with at least one parent tending to children, and often a warm meal just isn’t even in the mix for these deserving and well-intended parents.
So when I had the opportunity to team up with the Culver’s team to surprise a deserving group of people with the beloved ButterBurger in a ButterBurger Blindside, it was so easy to think of a deserving group!
Culver’s mission is that every guest leaves happy, and this summer they wanted to see the joy spread outside of the walls of the restaurant and to unexpected places, which is where this lovely project and idea came from, and let me tell you how I learned the best way to pull off a group date and celebrate parents!
We thought it would be really fun to give the parents a night off from cooking and cleaning and to give their children a really fun experience too. So the idea came, book a fun venue children can enjoy, get a few babysitters to make sure the kids were okay and watched over, and set up a room with a great dinner for adults to enjoy. The i.d.e.a. Museum instantly came to mind as a local museum I knew everyone would love.
Aren’t my toddler and my friend Janssen’s toddler the cutest little museum playmates? And my friend Jen makes some pretty cute kiddos too, aren’t they darling playing together?
And I loved watching Kayla’s boys build and create and show how fun the museum is for older kids too!
We have a membership to the i.d.e.a Museum and my little man is the biggest fan of museum days! They have so much to do for kids of all levels, but I really love that there are infant and toddler areas so moms of the youngest children can still come and enjoy. In fact, if you’re an AZ local, you should check out the out The Art of Healthy Living exhibit at the i.d.e.a. Museum, running September 29, 2017, through January 21, 2018. It’s just such a fun experience for kids and for family dates! And this exhibit reminds us that splurging is okay, but it’s important to strive for a healthy balance with food, and with all aspects of our family life too!
For our group date, we booked a private event and reserved a party room at the museum for adults and an area next to the party room for the children to enjoy. We hired a few babysitters to watch the children while they played, and it was such a win/win with parents next to children to help them feel safe and be there for any special needs, and there was still plenty of time for adults to really enjoy time without having one (or both!) parents glued to helping children and missing out on social time.
Those hard-working parents knew there would be food, but it was so fun to create a surprise. And the only thing that delivers more joy than a Culver’s ButterBurger, is a ButterBurger Blindside where delicious food shows up as a fun surprise! I joined the Culver’s team to bring in the food and surprise these friends. It was so much fun, and we enjoyed having dinner together with our kids, with babysitter help, while still getting warm meals all around!
The burgers paired with healthy sides were so delicious, and perfect for the group date!
Oh my goodness, we’ll be doing this again! What an amazing group date hack we’ve uncovered! Book a could-be birthday party venue, have a babysitter or two come along, and let your kids enjoy the fun while you enjoy some group date time too! I loved receiving messages from friends expressing how much fun they had, how much fun their children had, and that several kids woke up the next morning asking if we could please do it again. That alone makes me think, we’d sure better plan to soon!
We’ll also be seeking out more Culver’s as it was such a delicious burger, and such a family friendly place to go for a family date, or a date where you leave your kids at home. To learn more about Culver’s and find a location in your area, visit culvers.com.
Photos by: Chrissy of Let Me See You Sparkle Photo
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