61 hours and 30 minutes

For the first time in almost 6 years, Deb and I went away for the weekend without the kids.

At 8:45 on Friday Maile picked up Christopher leaving us alone in house for the first time in a long time. By 9:30 we were on the way to the airport heading to Connecticut.

The flight was fine and we landed in White Plains around 3 pm. Being Catholic, and Friday during lent, we were starving! So went and got an early dinner. We met Pat and Kerry for a late dinner and drinks. Then returned to the hotel in the snow. Yup, it snowed about 4 inches overnight.



Here I am cleaning off the car. The 'ugly car' as Deb called it.



Saturday morning we went to my Dad's where I finally met my niece Anna and got to see John and Katharine in 'parent mode'. Kind of cool to watch them in action. I did tell John we bought another huge stuffed animal and he genuinely seemed upset! I was kidding. For now.

We the split up, I went to see my mom and Deb went with her sister and mom. We met up again around 4:30 to get ready. At 5:59 I finally started getting ready. We left at 6:02.

Here is a picture of us. We clean up good don't we?



We had a lot of fun at the reunion, seeing several friends and getting caught up. We then went out with several of Deb's friends from high school to a bar and didn't get to the hotel until around 2:30. That has to be the latest we've been out together that didn't involve a kid in the emergency room in a really long time.

More pictures here.

Sunday morning we got up, had a nice breakfast at the Windmill Diner and headed for the airport. After we checkin, we find out that flight is delayed 4 hours. Equipment failure. Okay, so we'll just hang out and spend some quality time together. Then they move it back another 2 hours.

Now White plains isn't a big airport so we didn't have many options. I went to talk to the agent to see what we could do and our only choice was to drive to LaGuardia. Yup. Change airports. She gave us tickets on the 5:55 flight at 4:00 pm. She did give us first class upgrades, but I suspect she didn't think we'd make it.

I rented a car and drove from White plains to LaGuardia in 40 minutes. Yes, I have the check out time and check in time from the Avis receipt. We got checked in , through security and to the gate by 5:40. Sat on the plane and shotgunned a beer.

The flight was uneventful and we got home around 10:15. 61 hours and 30 minutes after we left.

All kids were intact, Maile seemed sane and exhausted.