I’ll be totally honest, hosting events makes me all kinds of anxious. I think back to being in middle school and hoping all my friends will come. And in another note of honesty, some events I’ve participated in have been more like those middle school nightmares than big time successes.

That’s why I was all kinds of happy when my friends came out for the Moto Zoo Crew Event hosted with Verizon at the Louisville Zoo. It may have been the lure of the open bar or the opportunity to hang out with friends with free permission to bring the kiddos or the allure of the zoo after hours,  but whatever the motivating factor, it was awesome to get together with friends on a hump day – unfortunately no camels made an appearance.

It was a bit of a zoo (cheesy pun intended) but in the best way possible. There were kiddos galore having all kinds of fun and generally running amok but everyone got it together when the Zoo brought by a couple animals for the kids to pet (or stare at in a mix of fear/amazement). After seeing the cutest little chinchilla, I wanted to take it home (maybe just for the weekend though). There was also a little hedgehog which was beyond adorable, if not a little prickly.

The whole night of fun was thanks to Verizon which brought out their new Motorola Z Force phone for everyone to try out. The phone is pretty freaking cool and had me thinking about making the switch. It has this magnetic panel on the back which allows you to swap out extra packs, or mods as they call them, to the phone. Okay, I know that’s a bad description but basically you can add one an extra battery pack, a mini JBL sound boost speaker, a Hasselblad True Zoom camera (for the photo lovers) or a projector. The projector was a big hit. Say you’re at a wedding and they’re not showing the big game. You could pull it up on the ESPN app and then project it onto the wall. The bride and groom might not be happy but everyone else would probably be pretty jazzed.

They used it to show the kids some cartoons and the picture was super clear. It was pretty awesome. One other awesome feature is that it’s shatterproof – so the kids got to take their turn trying to break it, to no avail. After just having to replace another phone that Reese shattered, I was pretty sold.

All in all it was a solid little Wednesday night (which we ended in the best way possible, with a trip to Dairy Kastle). I even got to finally meet one of my long time internet blogging buds – Ashley Glass – in person. Go follow her if you’re not, she takes some gorgeous photos and she and her adorable family are even more wonderful in person. Big thanks to all my friends for coming out and to Ashley for snapping these pics.

See the projection on the ceiling. You could project your Netflix on your ceiling. A whole new definition for Netflix and Chill.

Big thanks to Verizon for sponsoring this post and event! It was a lot of fun!