When the going gets tough....

A friend told me about a study which stated families who camp feel closer than families who do not.  We talked about that study with a good dose of skepticism. The take away from the study was, when camping, families face difficulties that they have to solve together thus eventually leading them to a close bond.   I didn't read the study but I think this could be extrapolated to include families who vacation together.  Vacations=difficulties and we faced a few.

Problem #1...3 hour flight delay, after we'd arrived at the airport and parked the car.

No one complained.  They played games and kept themselves happily occupied without any devices (though if things had gotten rough I'd not have had a single issue with handing over an iPad) until our plane left at 8pm.  Of course the pat down I endured at security provided a nice long laugh for them put them in a jovial mood.

Problem #2...Huge disappointment at American Girl

I won't go into the details of how we ended up going to the Isabelle movie premier but it was not originally in our plan.  Though we were promised it would be a great time complete with an opportunity to meet the actresses from the movie and real New York City Ballet ballerinas.   The girls were so excited!  We arrived at the American Girl store at 4pm and waited for 45 minutes for an American Girl shuttle to take up another 35 minutes to a theatre.  By the time our shuttle (chock full of other excited girls) arrived the ballerinas were gone and the actresses were seated.  We saw them from afar but whoopee, the girls thought they'd meet them.  We watched the movie and then took the subway back.  There was no way we were waiting for another shuttle.   We had some blue girls on our hands.

However it was amazing to watch them as they felt it, they named it and slowly they moved on.   I on the other hand was still fuming inside but I smiled on the outside and began to mentally compose a sternly worded email to American Girl.  That helped and then I moved on. 

Our whole evening was off kilter.  We walked to Rockefeller Center, exhausted and starving.   Past any smart level of hungry and in the danger territory.

We found Magnolia Bakery!  Carrot cake was the cupcake flavor of the day.  My favorite, unless there is yellow cake with chocolate buttercream.  Things were looking up. We were one spot away from ordering our cupcakes when I noticed just one little carrot cake cupcake in the glass case.  My name was all over it.  The woman in front of us in line did not notice my name and ordered the very last carrot cake cupcake of the day.  

No more in back. 

Eleanor looked up at me with her sweet little eyes--sorry mom!

Every other cupcake seemed to pale in comparison but I had to snap out of it.   Foucs, these are just cupcakes!  We ordered a few flavors, which were all amazing.  

We found some sandwiches which nobody was all that excited about but ate them anyway.

 Our hanger vanished and we started talking about the night we thought we were going to have versus the night we did have.

We laughed about how really bad it was in comparison to our anticipated night and somehow I felt so happy. 

I felt really proud of our girls.  

They can handle disappointment! 

 Feeling gratitude in spite of a letdown is key to happiness in life and it felt so good to see a real life example of how they handled a little sorrow.

I still wish Emma had met a real ballerina and I'd had a carrot cake cupcake.  

Someday.