Brenden seems to have made it through his mom and dad’s first trip away from him. My parents said he was subdued the whole time we were gone, but not sobbing the whole time which made me feel better. Until my mom said that at night he asked for “mama and dada.”

Patrick and I had a great short little trip. Our flight there started off on the wrong foot though. Apparently they cancelled our flight at 2:45 that morning and it was only sheer luck that Patrick checked his email to find that out. We’d been put on the next flight which left an hour later. That really wasn’t a big deal—except that I would have loved not getting up at 4:30 in the morning. I’m not a morning person. But since I woke up before the alarm for some crazy reason, it was ok. The problem was that whoever put us on the new flight coded it in such a way that made it look like we’d just booked the flight and we got tagged for extra security screening.

Now I think I’ve mentioned before that when I pack I use every ounce of space to its fullest capacity, leaving only one way that things will be able to fit back in.  So I was not happy when the security people took every last thing out of every piece of luggage we had, which lucky wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to be annoying that I had to stand in the airport and repack my underwear and such.  They lost a few more points when we boarded and Patrick had the audacity to ask if he could hang our garment bag in the closet. The lady looked at him like he was crazy and then pointed for him to open the door and put it in there. Thanks! Our other flight attendents were just as helpful.

But really, none of that was that bad, just annoying, and everything was fine from there. We got to NYC and checked into our hotel, ate Patrick’s favorite street meat, where the man had stayed open just because someone told him Patrick would be in town, and then got ready for the wedding reception. It was a very nice reception held in a restraunt that over looked Jersey City, which we especially enjoyed. We had a lot of fun seeing all of Patrick’s work friends.

After staying out late and having little sleep the night before, we had the best night sleep ever! The pillows and comforter were fluffy and cozy. There was miraculously no noise. No cat sleeping on my head. No dogs scratching and jingling their tag, no baby crying. So we slept in. When we got up we headed to Chinatown, where we bought the kind of things they lead you through back streets and down the locked stairs of dark buildings, where you wonder if you are about to die. No, not whatever bad thing it is you’ve just thought of, just purses and watches. Then we ate in our favorite restraunt (the one where we had the “short table” on my birthday the one year) because it is tradition.

Then we headed home. We had to go through the extra security screening again, but they didn’t unpack a thing! The flight attendents were very pleasant and we even made it back to DFW half an hour early!

We were very happy to hear Brenden make a noise from his bedroom where he was supposed to be sleeping when we got home. Even though I knew it wasn’t the best idea, I went and sprung him from bed and we all played for a bit. When I went to put him back to bed I thought he would pitch a fit, but he layed right down and went to sleep, happy to have everything right with his world again as my mom said.