Once upon a time a queen and her king decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Last Saturday I had the privilege of having some grownup alone time with my husband. The efforts involved in a night without children sometimes outweigh the thrill of actually having the adult evening. All the packing, situating, organizing necessary to get all of us ready for our respective overnights can be rather consuming. And during the process I’m a nervous wreck because the more I pack, the more I think of things that need to be packed. The bigger our bags become, the more I realize that eventually all of this will need to be unpacked. It’s usually a project I like to spread over two days but with each and every day being so full with daily packing, situating and organizing, I wasn’t able to pack for this overnight until the morning of the big event. Fortunately the relaxation to follow would make it all worthwhile.
In my mind, I had romanticized the whole evening. Dining in a quiet booth while gazing into my husband’s eyes, followed by an illuminating play (Les Miserables, my favorite), completing in a leisurely morning workout and a nice breakfast with the man I love. Unfortunately life doesn’t always go as planned.
As we traded off the children to my parents, Gabby threw up all over herself, her carseat and me. Once that obstacle was tackled, we continued on our destination of relaxation. We got to our hotel room, sat down and started discussing our plan for the evening. In efforts to make the evening run smoothly, we called the restaurant that we were positive told us “they didn’t take reservations but if we went at 5 we’d have no problem.” The restaurant told us they were completely full and couldn’t accommodate us! We didn’t have reservations on the biggest restaurant night of the year?!?!? We solved the crisis by finding another restaurant where we could eat in the bar and still utilize our gift cards, yes we were lucky enough to be having a free dinner out of the deal. We were enjoying our lovely dinner at the new destination and suddenly I realized that I didn’t have the gift cards! Prince Charming had to leave my side, jump on his stallion and ride off into the sunset after of our pot of gold. He was back in no time and mission relaxation was back on!
The play was wonderful until…fifteen minutes left in the show when I started to not feel well and ended up having to leave early. What was happening to our fairy tale night?!?! Early the next morning I figured the getaway could be salvaged with our relaxing morning of working out and breakfast. When we got to the hotel gym, the lady told us there was a $12 plus tax per person fee to use their dinky little gym! Forget that! And forget fairy tale Valentine’s Day!
Because I have the most amazing husband, friend and partner, we laughed at all the failures of our perfect getaway and enjoyed every second of our time together. It reminded me that nothing, including me, is perfect and stop everything thinking it will be. So in the end, they still lived happily ever after!
I'm a mother, wife, daughter, and friend. Until recently I was also an employee. Now that I'm a full time mom, I've decided to make my thoughts, concerns and feelings public.
