I don’t know how you spent your St. Patrick’s Day weekend but we were lucky enough to spend it with fun friends at a great house, seated in lovely western Michigan.

If you’ve seen the commercials supporting tourism of the “Great Lakes State” then you know how beautiful it is. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking. And you may or may not know that Tim Allen is the voice on those commercials, too. Cool, huh?

Anyway, we arrived on Friday night and got the party started right away; we had prearranged our babysitters to watch the kids so we could have ourselves an adults-only evening in the darling town of Saugatuck.

Lucky for me, I get to visit there often. You see, my husband grew up in Holland, Mich., which is a stone’s throw to Saugatuck. If you haven’t been, you are seriously missing out. Seriously. It is the quaintest little place you can find on the map. I absolutely love it. Not to mention, there are great boutiques, yummy restaurants and a plethora of places to “get your drink on.” And the best part? The town resides on the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, which feeds into Lake Michigan. Translation: Beach town, baby!

And boy did we luck out this weekend. The weather was incredible. I can’t recall the last time it was sunny and gorgeous on St. Patrick’s Day; it’s usually cold, rainy and dreary. Not this year! We packed shorts, tank tops and flip flops, and had the sun to ourselves all weekend long.

By Saturday, there were five families in total, which means there were 13 kids running wild, exhausting each other! The parents were busy drinking “snake bites” and feasting on my chili and other yummy treats and snacks brought by one of the other mommies. In fact, what she did was so cute that I feel compelled to share.

She made a fruit tray in the shape of a rainbow. She also served shot glasses filled with milk and sprinkled rims for the kids to snack on. And the best one was the mini black pots filled with mint chocolate chip ice cream. The kids loved every bit of it. 

With that said, the kids were taken care of! And even better, the adults were being served by a local chef, whipping up an eight-course meal of Irish-inspired foods. I cannot tell you how yummy it was! But I can tell you that I likely gained 10 pounds from eating all of it. Most of us only made it to midnight, due to the massive amount of food and drinks from the day.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that today was a rough one. Holy smokes. I wish kids understood the meaning of a hangover. Thank goodness my husband was a good sport and agreed to drive us home while I napped in back with the kids.

A weekend like that, as phenomenal as it was, needs to happen just once a year—for my kid’s sake, and for my liver’s sake!