Surprise!

Last Thursday evening I was cleaning up after dinner when my sister in law showed up. My husband had said she was coming over after her Pilate's class to visit. Seemed random, but it's Michelle so you just go with it. She'd been there for a few minutes and she asked me to look over some travel documents for her boss. I thought that was odd but whatever so I took a peak at what she had. What she had contained a Boarding Pass with MY name on it bound for LaGuardia the very next morning! As in 12 hours from that point! I look up in disbelief and Paul says "surprise we're going to NYC!" I'm all like "What? Why? Huh??" Just total shock. "What about the kids?" He says he's got it covered - Michelle is keeping the kids and he's made all these arrangements to get the kids to/from their various activities. It was quite impressive actually and how he kept it all a secret - super impressive! He even left a list of the doughnuts the kids like for "Donut Saturday." I spent the next few hours walking around shocked and busy and mentally preparing to leave my brood for 3 days! It took some time for this control freak momma to get excited - I was just totally overwhelmed and then Lily with her black eye had a meltdown about not wanting to go to school and my heart broke. And Paul reminded me that it would all be OK. And we love NYC. It's where we got engaged. It's where he took me on another surprise trip before we had kids. It's one of our special places.

We got up at dark o'clock to get the airport and our flights were easy and on time. When we got to the city our room wasn't ready yet - we got to stay at the Waldorf Astoria (yay for a traveling husband who racks up hotel/air points like crazy! This is definitely a perk of his job)! We dropped off our bag and headed out to walk around. I love being able to walk places in the city. We've been several times so I'm pretty comfortable being able to navigate around. We were starving so we went to Carnegie Deli (so touristy I know but the sandwiches are good and big) and shared a sandwich and chatted with a nice couple from Baton Rouge. We went to Times Square and window shopped and went into some of the fun stores around there. My mom also happened to be in NYC to visit my brother so we were trying to figure out meeting up with them. We went to the TKTS booth to theater tickets - we ended up with Sat matinee tickets for Avenue Q. Friday night we met up with my mom, brother and sister in law at at Brazilian restaurant. It was very good and not somewhere we'd normally pick. After dinner we had expensive cocktails (compliments of the Waldorf) at the hotel (seriously the drinks were between $18 - $20!).

Saturday morning we got going pretty early. We went to American Girl Place for the girls and got them a treat. That store is a little overwhelming! The girls! The dolls! The money rolling into that place! We walked around and found Sprinkles bakery - apparently the bakery that started all the cupcake interest. The original is in LA but they had just opened one in NYC. We had the best cupcakes ever. Our favorite was the Salty Caramel. Oh. My. Goodness. We went to our show which was really funny. And the walked a lot more. Paul had done a bit of research before our trip including looking up food trucks. He had 3 he really wanted to find so we walked a lot on Saturday to see if we could find one. No luck but we had a lovely walk and stumbled upon some cool places! We met up with my family again for dinner. We had drinks at some bar and then had dinner at Rosa Mexicana. Seriously the best Mexican I have ever eaten. The Sangria came in this little pitcher - it was so good. They made guacamole table side and it was the best stuff ever. Such a fun night! It was really fun to spend time with my brother without the kids around - I can't remember the last time that happened!

Sunday we woke up to rain but we didn't let that stop our fun. We went to Sprinkles again and decided to walk to a different part of the city - Union Square to see a movie. We saw Bridesmaids and absolutely loved it. So freaking funny. Go see it! I had remembered that Survivor was filming at the David Letterman theater Sunday night so we walked by there trying to stalk some Survivors but sadly I did not run into Boston Rob or Amber or Russell or Crazy Phillip. The day went by fast and we had to go to the airport.

Our flight was due to depart around 7pm. It took no time to get to the airport so we had plenty of time once we got through security (interesting note - in RDU every passenger was going through the body scanner. At LGA? No body scanners in the US Airways terminal.). We checked the boards and everything was on time. We went to grab some dinner and in the 30 minutes we were eating apparently all hell broke loose and when we checked the board on the way to the gate flights were getting delayed and cancelled like crazy. We checked on my phone when we actually got the gate and it didn't take long to realize we weren't going to make our connection. We ended up getting rebooked on a direct flight to RDU that wasn't going to leave until 9:40. To make long story shorter we didn't take off until 1am, landing at RDU at 2:15am! Crazy! But I was glad to get home to my babies.

It was a wonderful weekend! The weather, while cool and sort of gray was perfect - no sweating! I can't thank my husband enough for going through the effort to make some time for ourselves and planning the trip. I can't thank my sister in law and mother in law enough for their help with the kids. And I can't thank my friends enough who helped out in pulling off the surprise! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! xoxo