the THOMAS family days

Ahhhhhhh!!!!! My husband, he’s unreal! Here’s how it went-

I was decorating for Sam’s first birthday party Thursday night, and in walk my parents! How fun! Dad had business in Gaffney that week, so mom went with him. He sometimes stops by to say hello on his way home, so I was surprised to see them but it wasn’t out of the ordinary-until Mark told me to pack my bags!! My parents were keeping the boys for the weekend and we were leaving the house at 7am! He wouldn’t tell me where he was taking me until we were in the car in the morning. What?!?! This, from my husband who’s usually bad at keeping secrets, a HUGE surprise! I love surprises! Needless to say, I didn’t go to sleep until very late that night!

We woke up early, got ready, kissed the sleeping boys, packed the car, kissed mom good-bye, and drove off. I had a feeling we were getting on a plane, but I still didn’t know. Mark made a CD to tell me where we were going, so he put it in. The first song, “Luck be a Lady”-we’re going to Vegas!!! SO fun!! We’d been once before and loved it! He let me think that for a minute and then played the second song-“Mexico”. I knew that wasn’t it-we packed coats and sweaters! Next, “Sweet Home Chicago”. I knew it, I knew it! We haven’t been there and it’s on our list! I was so excited! Exploring a new place with my main man-how fun! That song played for a couple minutes, then he said, “You know, I can’t take my number one girl to the number two city.” He played the next song, “New York, NEW YORK!!!” Are you kidding me?!?! Seriously!!?!?? I started crying. I couldn’t believe it! He was taking me to New York-to see the Rockefeller Center Tree and soak up the sights and sounds of the amazing city at Christmastime with my number one-ah! I don’t deserve this man!I could. not. stop smiling, and I really couldn’t believe it! But before we knew it, we had checked our bags at our hotel and were eating lunch at Del Frisco’s looking at The Tree!Since this was a SURPRISE, I hadn’t changed my voice mail at work-I thought I was going to be THERE today! I went to the ladies room to call my assistant to ask her to change it for me, and I took a picture. Who does that except someone who is out-of-her-mind excited to be in New York! Babe, you’re amazing! We ate a yummy lunch, and then went to play in the city!St. Patrick’s Cathedral-and the tree in front of the Madison Avenue entrance of our hotel-is beautiful. Just beautiful! We walked over to Central Park and loved seeing everything, I mean everything!, decorated along the way!We walked back to our hotel to get ready for our date night-dinner at Frankie and Johnnie’s, drinks at a fun bar in the Theatre District, and then to The Al Hirschfeld Theatre to see this amazing show! I’m telling you what, it was GOOD!! If you’re in New York, I highly recommend it!Another fun surprise-we got to go backstage after the show! Our good friends, Allison and Shaun, are good friends with Cam Adams (who was GREAT!) and she was kind enough to host us for a bit. It was so neat to be on the stage of such a successful Broadway show talking with a cast member! (Side note: I kept thinking to myself, “I didn’t know anything about this just last night, and now here I am on Broadway!” What?!?!) She’s also the understudy for Rosemary, the lead actress, and she played that part the week before we were there. I’m telling you-she’s good!And that was our amazing Friday.

Saturday morning, I went to the Today Show!! Our hotel is just blocks from Rockefeller Center, so I was there in no time. I didn’t get there super early, around 8:00 I think, but I still got to be in the crowd and see Lester and Amy for a segment outside and of course watch them through the window. I stood by a Girl Scout troop hoping to get on TV, but Linds said they were on before I got there. Oh well!The other BIG advantage of being out earlier than most is that there isn’t a crowd around The Tree yet! I love it SO much!We didn’t have anything scheduled on Saturday, so our plan was to take a cab to Soho and just walk. When we got back to the hotel that night, I think Mark figured we walked about five miles. I’d do that five miler any day!

We passed a handful of New York City Christmas Tree lots which were set up on the corner of any given street-so urban and so fun! They made me smile. We strolled down a quite street admiring the Brownstones. Really, it was quite. There were signs posting warning of a $350 fee if you honk!! We also stumbled upon Purl Soho! I read their blog, so I felt like I had bumped into a celebrity! We went to the American Museum of Natural History and took lots of dino pictures for our dino-loving boy! I sent my dad the picture on the right to show Jack that his daddy is friends with a T-Rex! He already thinks Mark is pretty cool, but I’m quite sure this made his stock rise even more! We ate lunch at Shake Shack, and yes it’s as good as ‘they’ say. We left there and got some great views of Central Park West and NYU Law. We walked through Little Italy and Chinatown, and man was that interesting. I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect to see storefront after storefront of seafood and eels swimming around in coolers. They were busy, too! We went into a bakery and saw a bread making class-so fun!-and then stopped in a bar for a drink. It was the Santa Pub Crawl on Saturday, and we must have seen 100, maybe 200?, people all over the city dressed as Santa, Mrs. Claus, elves, reindeer, presents, gingerbread men-it was nuts! We saw Grand Central Station decorated for Christmas, found a really great pizza restaurant to eat some really great New York Pizza (can’t remember the name of it though!) and then walked to Magnolia Bakery for dessert! We got it to-go, walked back to our hotel, ordered a movie, and ate our sweets with our feet up! We covered so much but there’s still so much to see and do! What a Saturday! Sunday was a busy day, too! We were going to the Meadowlands to watch the Jets play! We’ve always talked about going to an NFL game, we like Rex Ryan, I ‘know’ and watch a handful of Jets players, PLUS they’re the NEW YORK Jets, so what a great team to watch! We stopped by the Tree for a visit first, and Mark endured my request for multiple tree pictures (thanks, babe!!), then we made our way to the subway for the first time. It was really easy-at least for me since I was traveling with Mr. GPS! Mark’s sense of direction will rival Garmin any day! We took the subway to Penn Station, Penn Station to Secaucus, NJ, and straight to the Meadowlands from there! And I literally mean straight there. We got off the train and walked the distance from the Cock-a-booses to William’s Brice-so convenient! And roundtrip was about $30 for both of us!The Jets were playing the Chiefs, so we got to see Ryan Succop kick again. He made a 50-something yarder in the picture-gooo Gamecocks! We had great seats and the weather was pretty nice, too! Mark even surprised me with a little team spirit to keep my head and ears warm!The Jets won big, we got Jack a new jersey (we have a little Darrelle Revis walking around our house! Revis Island, baby!) and then we made our way back to the City. We had time to say good-bye to the Tree, we had a drink at our hotel overlooking 51st Street, and then we headed to the airport to arrive home safely at 11:30. What a trip! I still can’t believe my super-sweet-usually-not-so-good-at-secrets husband planned all this and swooped his so undeserving wife away for a Christmas weekend in my favorite city-just the two of us! It was magic. Thank you babe!!

I took our big boy on our first Christmas date of the season tonight. Sam and Mark played at home, and Jack and I went to PJs with Santa! I told him he was going to get to talk to Santa and he got excited. I totally didn’t believe the excitement based on the last two years, but it’s such a sweet event for the kids, so I was excited, too!

We walked around for a bit and were going to do a craft with Callie and Chloe and James, but then Jack spotted Cocky and nearly jumped out of his skin. I’m totally doubting that he’ll talk to Santa at this point! We headed to watch Rudolph instead-a safe distance away from the Cocky sighting-and he loved it, popcorn and all!The line to see the big guy was pretty long, and it wasn’t getting any shorter, so we hopped in and I started psyching him up! The first thing he said he wanted to ask Santa is what’s in his pockets. The boy loves pockets! Then he said he was going to ask him for a John Deere car and a new hammer for Sam. So sweet! As we waited we got to talk with some of our friends! We chatted with Hudson and his family and the Goddards and got to watch countless others practice being patient! We finally made it to the front of the line, and Jack still seemed so excited! He watched the family before us take their turn and wanted so badly to talk to Santa-he kept asking me to call his name. I explained that his turn was next and he could talk with him then. I really couldn’t believe his excitement this year! Our turn came, and wouldn’t ‘cha know, our big boy hopped right up there and talked to Santa-and smiled! He did his nervous-shy-stick-my-tongue-out thing at first and then smiled a big, happy smile! And sure enough, he asked about his pockets and told him about the car and the hammer. I was so proud it brought tears to my eyes! Sitting on Santa’s lap-a little thing. Watching your little boy grow up right before your very eyes-a big thing. Thank you God for this wonderful gift of being his momma!When his turn was over, we were talking about how fun that was and what a nice man Santa is. Jack said, “Mommy, Hosanna is my BEST friend!” And then we ran into the Duprees-yay!-and Watson was his best friend! Aren’t they sweet! Such a fun, fun, night