My husband and I were at a wedding for one of our best friends in NYC this weekend. It was one of those events that I had been excited about for months. Time with just Matt and me. A romantic getaway. Fancy hotel. Seeing friends from college. And just being able to relax for 48 hours.

I’m not kidding when I say I had been excited about this event for months. We received the Save the Date information two weeks before I had Henry. I immediately called my parents and asked them to PLEASE reserve that weekend to babysit. They did.

Not to mention the wedding was in NYC. Our favorite spot. I even made a list of a few places I wanted to make sure we popped into – stores and restaurants. Even stop by our old building and say hello to the guys that still work there… and show them pictures of our Benjamin and our Henry.  When we moved from there, William was 15 months and Alex was 3 months.

And well… let’s just say, our romantic wedding weekend getaway… it didn’t go exactly according to plan.

Friday night got canceled for us. My husband had so much work to do that he couldn’t get away for the rehearsal dinner.  Cancel romantic hotel. I didn’t mind so much, because it gave us an extra night with the boys.

Saturday – the boys ended up having a soccer game in the morning that they just did not want us to miss… truth be told, I didn’t want to miss it either. So I sent Matt (he was in the wedding party) off to NYC on the train, and I stayed home with the boys. I went to the soccer game. Ate lunch with them. Got them situated with my parents. And took off to NYC by car at around 1pm – by myself.

Now, I have been driving to NYC for the last 8 years. I feel like I know the City pretty well. My husband sent me directions to get to our friend’s apartment.  He lives in SOHO.  But driving… I don’t know my way too well around there. The directions seemed easy enough. Take the FDR Highway to the Canal Street exit, then take a right. His building is “right there.”

Well… there was NO Canal Street exit. And his building was not “right there.” I actually kept driving on the FDR HIghway, convinced I would come across Canal Street. Oh, no. Instead, I came to the Brooklyn Bridge. And over I went. Could you possibly hear me swearing where you live? And on top of that, the traffic on the bridge was 45 minutes! It was horrible. I sat there in the car, crying. And since you cannot use cell phones in NY while driving, I was screwed. BIG TIME.

I got over the Brooklyn Bridge (finally) and flagged a cop to get directions back to the City. He saw how distraught I was… and so he did something I am still shocked that he did… he got in his car and said, “Follow me…” And he looped me back around and got me going the direction I needed to be going in.

I was back in NYC. BUT! It was now 5 pm and the wedding started at 6:30 pm. I needed to find the apartment, change and get to the Puck Building in NYC – pronto!

I don’t know if you have ever driven around Chinatown and Little Italy in NYC… if you have, you know what I mean… I was in traffic for another hour! I had NO idea what way I was going. I finally found a random parking garage and figured I would park there for the night and flag a cab to my friend’s apartment. Except… the guy told me to park overnight at this lot was $200! I burst into tears again… it was nearing 6 pm, I was going to be late, my parents were nervous about me because I was so lost downtown and so upset, my husband’s phone was about to lose its charge and he was already at the wedding. It was chaos.

And then I got a phone call from my father telling me that the road race the boys wanted to run in – the CVS 5K Classic in downtown Providence – the 100 yard dash was beginning at 8am. Not 10am, as I had thought. William and Alexander had run it last year, and this year William was determined to come in the top 3 so he could win a big trophy. They had to be at the race start at 7:30am.

We were going to be 3 hours away.

I ended finding a garage for $50 for overnight parking. I ended up getting to our friend’s apartment and changing and getting to his wedding on time. I had a wonderful time with Matt and my friends. We danced. We ate. We had champagne. It was a fabulous evening.

We got in at 1:30am. Set our alarms for 4am. Rolled out of bed half asleep. Walked the 5 blocks to the parking garage.

Although the weekend wasn’t the “romantic getaway to NYC” that we had originally planned… and we only ended up being in NYC for maybe 12 hours… and everyone at the wedding called us “crazy” for driving home to RI to see the 2 boys in a 100 yard dash…

You couldn’t possibly put a price to this face all yesterday afternoon…

After winning his first trophy!