We Are Moms 101
We have almost reached the milestone of 150 moms in the group, and so I thought that I would take some space here at the end of the newsletter to give a little “101” for the benefit of the newer moms in the group, and to update all our previous members about any “new and improved” ways of doing things. And by that, I mean that we’ve worked out some of the kinks in some of our processes, usually by trial and error (and a lot of emails). So without further ado…
Church Playdate. Our church play dates meet twice a month, usually the 1st and 3rd Monday of the month. Exceptions are noted on the calendar. There is no cost for these play dates, and we encourage moms to bring a friend or two. We prefer to know the approximate number of attendees, and we gather that info via evite or pingg, our two online invitation services. Also included in the online invitation is the web address for the sign up sheet to bring snack, music, a craft or story to the play date. We encourage you to sign up for one of these for at least one play date.
Outings. One other type of play date that we offer takes the title of “outing”. These play dates are scheduled away from the immediate Wooster area. It might be pool time at the Rittman Pool, a morning at Amazone in Medina, a romp through a corn maze and a hayride in Doylestown, or even an afternoon at the Akron Zoo. For these outings, there is almost always a charge that will be specified in the online invitation and food/snacks may or may not be readily available for purchase. All pertinent details will be accounted for in the online invitation for the event.
Girl’s Night Out. Generally, GNO takes place near the end of the month, on one of the last two Thursdays. We also have been making an effort to have some other activities for Moms to get to socialize, as you’ll see from our upcoming calendar. What can you expect at GNO? An evening spent at a local restaurant, a game night, a spa night, or a learning night (crafting, knitting, crocheting, scrapbooking, etc.). Also included in GNO are the fundraising nights for Forget-Me-Not Baskets, where we spend an evening at a home-party, or at Applebee’s Dine-to-Donate. We are working to include a few alternate activities in the coming months… be on the look-out for a shopping day around Mother’s Day.
Evite and Pingg. We utilize these two online services to send out the invitations for our activities. We’ve had marginal success with both, and the best way that I know of for you to insure on your end that you get the invitations is to add these two addresses to your email contact list: info@mailva.evite.com for evite and host@invite.pingg.com for pingg. Invitations are sent out a few days before each event, and will sometimes contain an attendance threshold for the event. What does that mean? Some of our activities (like the kids cookie class at Christmas, the play date at the gymnastics center, or the yoga nights for moms) are intended for a maximum number of individuals. We have started limiting the number of attendees for several reasons: some of the venues can only accommodate a certain number of people, we may not have enough people to be ensuring the safety of additional children, or there are limited amounts of supplies for the activity. We apologize in advance if capacity has been reached by the time you RSVP for an event, and hopefully that same event will be offered again at a later date. One other item of note about the invitations is that if we have a lack of attendance for an event, we reserve the right to cancel it. Check your email or the blog calendar for cancellations. Also, if you are not getting invitations, please email us! I’ve had to input the e-addresses twice myself since the service wouldn’t import directly from our gmail… mistakes could have (and likely may have!) been made in your address.
Newsletter. We send out a bi-monthly newsletter, filled with items that we think are of interest to the moms in the group. We always include a calendar of events, as well as recipes, tips, reviews, classified ads and other tidbits of info. We are always looking for contributors, so if you have something you think would look good in the next newsletter, please forward it to the group email address. Feel free to forward it to any moms you think might benefit from it!
Blog. In addition to our bi-monthly newsletter, we also maintain a blog. It is constantly updated with local events that you may want to go to, little tidbits for shopping (sales! coupon codes!), and also contains our calendar of events. We also place some of the “Best Of” articles from the newsletter here, as well as recipes, one tank trips, and product reviews. Can’t think of anything to do with the family this weekend? Scroll down through some of the posts, and there just might be something of interest. We also appreciate the resource that we have built in our network of almost-150 moms, and appreciate any submissions that you have. Jot down the details in an email to me, and I will cut and paste it directly into a post on the blog. No event is too small or too big, we appreciate all contributions. You can find the blog at www.wearemomsgroup.blogspot.com
Working Moms. One of our moms, Leann Hamey, coordinates activities for the working moms in our group, including play dates and GNO’s. If you’d like to be included on her email list-serve, check out the tab on our blog for her contact info and the calendar of events.
Empty Nesters. Denise Saari coordinates this group of moms for us. Empty Nesters are the moms who find themselves with extra pockets of time while the kids are in school or preschool. Denise coordinates mid-day meetings for lunches and informal gatherings, and if you’d like more information or to be added to her list-serve, please see the Empty Nesters tab on the blog.
Email. We do most correspondence through email, and are working to gather contact information for our moms, in case there would be an emergency. We don’t maintain a directory of addresses or family information, but would appreciate at least a phone number where you would most likely be able to be reached, should the immediate need arise. We also wanted to mention that if you feel that you’d like to stop receiving We Are Moms correspondences, you can opt out by sending an email at any time. Likewise, if you know of someone who would like to start receiving our emails, please send their name and e-address to the group email wearemomsgroup@gmail.com . We love to connect with new moms!
