Me, DP and DD are all moving to the other side of the country in a couple of weeks and quite fancy some kind of leaving party. Problem is, we have a different idea of what is suitable. DP wants to print invites out and invite absolutely everyone (including random people he hardly knows from the pub) and is talking about having to hire somewhere as the house will get trashed otherwise. I fancy a daytime do where we can invite our parent friends and get them to bring their kids along to play with DD (most of our friends kids are under 5). We are pretty skint. TBH, any party is likely to turn into an all-nighter, because we have the kind of friends where that happens (most of them are in bands, without any commitments, studenty types, even the ones with kids are quite "wild") I'm now thinking of starting about 4pm, letting the kids come round, then kind of progressing into a night do, maybe having a BBQ to keep people relatively sober. I'm pregnant, so I will just go to bed when I get tired and let people continue into the night.
Or should I have a kids do and a separate night out, to make all the wreakage somebody elses problem? Also, if I do the all-dayer thing, how do I hint to one particular friend that she shouldn't keep her 4 year old up all night in the middle of a load of drunken idiots without ending up with the (very badly behaved) child up in my DDs room pestering her all night?
Argh! I love my mates, but they are hard work!