Tuesday June 28th
I should have known it would end like this. Especially as I sit down to gather my thoughts to put this post together, 6 weeks later…..yeah, no WONDER the evening ended the way it did!
After we plopped down in the hot van, we had to figure out where to eat. Surely it should have been an easy decision. Not when you’re in Hoboken NJ, the parking is terrible and the food is somewhat limited. However, I did pull another living social coupon out of my bag…..who’s ready for…..PIZZA?! Luckily we were all hungry enough to not care one bit that this would be the umpteenth day to eat pizza for dinner. Balbo’s Pizza, ready or not, here we come. Because of the events that transpired once there, I have no photgraphic proof of that meal. That's a good thing.....
However, before we could stop for dinner, we made the executive decision to stop the begging and pleading right then and there. With amazing ease, we found a parallel parking space and walked right on up to Carlo’s Bakery…Cake Boss, you know the guy!
There was no one waiting in line, so I assumed that meant the shelves would be empty. It was nearly 7pm.
Yep, they pretty much were, but there was still enough left for us to make a selection, pose with some cakes and keep an eagle eye open for Carlo himself. We knew we wouldn’t see him, but it was still fun to hope!
Of course, once the excitement over actually buying goodies from Carlos had worn off, the grumpies set in. As we walked towards the pizza place, the kids bickered with one another, picked on each other….standard operating procedure.
We walked up to Balbo’s and found a very familiar seating arrangement. Boston ring a bell? This was the same…….4 tables outside the restaurant and none inside. Thankfully the weather was cooling down and no one else was there at the time. But then, the evening tanked. The kids were just being awful…to the point that I was embarrassed. It usually doesn’t get that bad. Bill had ordered the pizza and a salad and as he was eating part of the salad, Eric made a move to pick something up directly in front of Gregory, Gregory, in his usual flair of annoyance reached out to swat Eric’s hand away and that made a glass drop and break on the table, sending shards of glass into…….the salad. The salad with just one bite taken out of it. The $6.95 salad. This incident by itself really wasn’t soooo terrible, but there were a whole lot of other family dynamics going on that I had just had enough. I stood up, told Bill we would NOT be staying for dinner, to please get our food to go, and that the kids would have to wait to eat until we got to the hotel. AND? Carlo’s Bakery goodies would wait for the next day. These yummy treats were refrigerated and saved for the next two days......Canolli's, a mini Tiramisu cake and two other scrumptious desserts with lots of chocolate -thank goodness for teeny tiny hotel fridge's!
There were plenty of firsts on this trip-sleeping in clothes, sleeping 3 to a bed, not being harassed to brush teeth before going to bed-but walking out of/away from a restaurant before eating our food was by far the biggest first that I would like to forget. And as I think back to all the day entailed, it’s really no wonder they kids were on their worst behavior
1) Night before they were kept up until midnight riding a bus to the wrong destination in NJ
2) No chance to sleep in as we had to leave by 7:45 am
3) Disposable quick breakfast of cereal and milk in the Liberty State Park parking lot
4) Lunch? Well, we ate a lot of packed snacks because the food offered at Liberty Island was absurdly overpriced at $8 for a simple hamburger……multiply that times 7…..not family friendly in the slightest!
5) We thought we’d finish Ellis Island well before the place closed-we ended up walking out as the place closed
Even adults would have suffered through that kind of day, but while in the midst of the meltdowns and bad behavior, those things didn’t even register as good enough reasons to act the way they did. And maybe it still doesn’t. But, it does make it a little more excusable I suppose. I guess that’s what happens when hindsight is 20/20!
**It was also on this day that my mom called and tearfully told me that Greogry's hamster, Poof, had died. She was so sad and I knew Gregory would be so sad, so we opted to wait to tell for a day or two.
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