Another Celebration

This week we celebrated my husband's birthday with cupcakes and kids on the actual day and then yesterday I planned a little surprise "date" for just the two of us.

I hadn't ever planned a surprise for him before, so it was a little nervewracking, me being the person I am. First, I made arrangements for the kids to go over to our friends house for a few hours. This was a big step for me because I'm so bad about calling on friends for favors. The plan was for me to feed them dinner and then drop them off at 5:45 before I picked up my husband, which I had to do because we had one car, his was in the shop. The stressful part for me was that initially I didn't have a time planned to pick him up from work (it was more going to be him letting me know when he was ready and he had lots to get done so I was worried he might have to work later than normal) so I was not sure if my timing would work out. This was remedied by me pinning him down on a time that I would pick him up (6!!) to make sure it would work. If this all happened according to plan, we would then head to our dinner reservation at 6:30.

The one variable in the whole plan was that his car was in the shop and that there was a chance that it might be ready in time to be picked up before six. Sure enough, we were home from the grocery store unloading groceries at 5, kids snacking on goldfish crackers, when he called to say the car was ready and that he was ready to go get it. I had to call our friends and see if I could drop them off sooner, dinner included, since they hadn't been properly fed yet. I threw bagels, string cheese and dried mango into the diaper bag, figuring it was a good go-to meal. I dropped them off, and picked him up by 5:30, confident that we could still pick up his car and make the reservation.

When I picked him up at work he hopped in the car and said, "Hi family," without realizing that it was only me in the car. It felt so strange! I gave him a big grin and explained that we were heading out for sushi just the two of us. He loves sushi and there's a place that he'd never gone to that was recommended so I was excited for him to get to try it. He said, "Can we still get my car." I assured him that was our first mission, one which we accomplished after traffic that caused us to take 23 minutes to go two miles.

At one point during the day I let myself get really anxious about how it was all going to go. I didn't quite know how it would all play out with the car deal and dropping them off and picking him up. Now relaying the story it seems so silly that I was even worked up about it, but I was genuinely stressed trying to anticipate it all in advance. SHEESH TIA! RELAX.

During this little trip to Anxietyland, Jooge was watching Jay Jay the Jetplane (a new show she's seen just twice) and they were talking on the show about how you can't always control everything, sometimes you just have to let things happen and it'll work out. Yeah! Can ya believe it? PBS Kids comes through with just the right message when I needed it. I took a deep breath and figured that the worst thing that might happen would be that we might be late for our reservation, which could be fixed with a phone call. Of course we were early. And it went smoothly in every way, from us enjoying sushi and time together to the kids, who had a great time. No fights. No poopy diapers to change. Everyone was all smiles when I got there to pick them up.

Me? I was all smiles too. Sorry to be a big Mary Poppins on you but things do work out if you just relax and let them.