The weekend is over

I get in the car on my way out town with my girlfriend Laurie a mother of three. This is the first time either one of us have ever been away from the kids.It was a girls only weekend. I am a mother of two. We are off to Georgetown Virginia's Ritz Carlton. We head the car, a little Mercedes convertible, towards the state line.

As we pull away she looks at me and says "is he ok?" I reply "I think so but he does look a little scared" which is not a good look on a 6'7 260 pound man who likes to box, lift weights and has nicknamed himself Fighthaus. He looked lost holding our nine month old baby while our three year old little girl rides circles around him.

Soon we were on the road and within about 10 minutes a call comes in. Laurie looks at the caller id and laughs passing it to me. My husband already? I think she was glad it was not for her. William called to ask me what time the girls party started, the girls had a birthday party I had told him all of this less than an hour ago, I gently reminded him that I had left the directions, the invitation and the present on the kitchen island. Then he asked when I would be home? I replied "Sunday night." Right about then the phone went dead, I am still not sure if it was from shock or just a bad connection. We both laughed. Maybe he did not realize we where going overnight.
We pulled off the highway to indulge in some shopping therapy. As we stopped at the Off Saks store. I could already feel the size of the car closing in on me. How am I going to get my purchases home? There was no room in the trunk, very little leg room and a tiny compartment behind us that was filled with our very stylish over sized purses, Mom purses as I like to call them, you know the one you reach your hand in and come out with something stuck on the tip of your fingers who knows what it is but hopefully it is the half eaten cereal bar your child shoved in there the other day while you all were at the playground, yummy.

We shopped and shopped. I purchased sunglasses, sweat suits and shoes. I have a shoe and sunglass fetish and currently I am obsessed with Twisted Heart clothing. So I was in heaven. As we wheeled the shopping cart to the tiny car, yes I said wheeled because we had absconded with a grocery cart from the local store to carry all of our bags there was just too many to carry. As we approached the car I could feel the claustrophobia setting in. I am a 6'0 foot tall woman who is comprised mostly of legs. So as we packed and unpacked the car and then resorted to packing my leg room with our bags I was glad to know I had taken the extra time to get on the internet to download the directions and put them safely.....Oh no..... where had I put them. As I tried to shift around in my cramped seat and the find directions I had a realization, I left the handwritten map and hotel information on the kitchen island. Nice. I called my husband and he is already cranky. He said "I know you all are lost and I do not want to be involved. How far is New York anyway?" As I explain I just needed the hotel phone number in Washington DC. {Where did he get New York????} so could get the directions from the hotel. After my strange call to my loving husband and the realization that he really does not listen to a thing I say. We get very long drawn out directions to the hotel, when the concierge said turn at the ABC building I asked "are you sure I am going to see a liquor store?" she paused and then said "the television station...You know ABC" Ah the TV station. Yes I am a southern girl who likes to drink and get NUTTY. So when you say ABC I think liquor store.

We finally made it to our destination, not like I cared I was just happy to unwrap my legs from my chin, a great 5 star hotel in the middle of Georgetown. As the unintelligible concierge made our dinner reservations and checked us in. We talked about how ecstatic we were to be there, away from our grumpy, demanding, challenging husbands, Oh and our kids too. We got to our room and the sweet valet had brought up every bag, yep every single bag that we had finagled in our tiny car. All of our new purchases and if you have kids you will understand at least half of them were from the Disney store and not one of them was something we could wear unless one of us planned to put on the Tinkerbell costume and hit the town. My wonderful, motivated and athletic friend looked at me and asked if I wanted to work out I laughed. We agreed on a glass of wine in bed looking at our gossip magazines. What a treat!!! As we got ready for dinner we both pulled out our fancy handbags and transfered 1/100th of the stuff from our mommy bags to our perfect clean new purses. A little thought ran threw the back of my mind, do you think I will need the wipes, maybe just for tonight I can leave them in the room.

We went to dinner it was wonderful very uneventful. Other than a small water spill which soaked my pants, but not even that could not bother me. We ate and drank and talked about current events.

The next morning we slept in till around 7:00am, very late for us, then we had breakfast in bed. We were rested and ready to think about getting back to real life. We worked out in the gym and got directions on how to get home. Off we went homeward bound. On the way home all we could talk about was what are we going to find, dirty dishes, a messy house but I never could have expected what happened when I got home!

Lets go back a bit. You remember Alexis' birthday party on Saturday that she attended, she received a little goody bag with lots of great princess items one of them was a pearl bracelet. They had a great time, from what I understand Alexis eat a huge piece of cake and ran wild all over the birthday on a sugar high. I would be embarrassed but I figure since I was not there I get a pass on this one.

We rushed home in an attempt to make it there while Laurie's husband was out of the house. So she could sneak her purchases into her closet as if they had always been there. When we got to my house Laurie asked my husband about the weekend he said it had been very easy and he had enjoyed the time with the girls.

As I walked in the door the dog was actually jumping off the ground happy to see me, she is 14 years old so her getting up at all is rare, my husband proceeds to tell me we had run out of dog food. I headed straight to the closest and pull out the bag of dog food, who would have thought it would be in the pantry? He tells me everyone is napping.

I was home 15 minutes trying to unpack when I heard a frantic screaming from Alexis' room. When I got there she was perched on the edge of her bed. She told me there was something in her bed, I really didn't look at her, I thought yuck what could it be? She was so hysterical I thought it was a rat maybe even a snake something really gross. As I looked around many thing ran through my mind how did a rat get in her bed? I looked over and saw she was pointing at a pearl on her floor, I picked it up and turned to her and said "this?" That is when I noticed the blood on her face, it was mainly under her left nostril and all over her hands, lots of blood and she was screaming "GET IT OUT" I was still confused. As she was pleading with me to get it out I finally said "get what out" She pointed at her nose, she said "the pearller {as she calls it} is stuck in my nose." It was from the goody bag. A pearl from her bracelet up her nose. No kidding, way up her nose. As I am trying to get her dressed to go to the ER she pleaded with her Daddy to get it out, "GET IT OUT", he tried but all that came out was blood and more blood. She would not get dressed so finally was carrying her under my arm totally naked to the car. She finally agrees to put on a pretty dress, the pretty dress part was important. She tells me she only wants a girl doctor with blonde hair, I think oh lordy. I wonder how this is going to go. As we drive along I ask her why she put the pearller up her nose? She tells me while sobbing I can only tell the pretty doctor with blonde hair.

We finally get to the hospital. After a 5 minute wait in the lobby they rushed her to the room. In walks a nurse with blonde hair so Alexis was happy till Dr. Robert appeared. I explained that the girl is the nurse but Dr. Robert was going to get the pearller out of her nose. She after a long silence agreed to let him get it out. He tried and tried to get the pearller out of her nose and Dr Robert's only comment was "where you trying to make your nose as pretty as your dress". She liked that. She finally told him the reason she put the pearller up he nose was because she wanted to know what would happen. As we strapped her flailing, beat red body to a back board to hold her still. She just screamed over and over "I have to pee" as loud as possible. The nurse turned to me and said "She has got some lungs and I think we scared the pee out of her." Yep. You are right about that I thought. I was concentrating on holding back my tears and laughter at this crazy, scary and funny situation. We finally got her calmed down a little bit by talking about all the people she could tell about her hospital visit. Thankfully on the Dr's final ditch attempt before surgery he got the pearller out of her nose. As he looked at the pearl in his hand, he commented "that is pretty big to be up there." After we ran to the restroom Alexis asked the doctor if she could keep the pearller. Sadly he had already thrown it out.

I had to laugh, when William commented it was a successful weekend because technically I was home when the pearl got stuck up her nose. My darling husband is a great father and he always makes me laugh at the right times.

Overshadowed by all of this our sweet baby Emme started getting up from the floor and standing all by herself while I was away. Our growing baby girl.
Kirsten