Just A Little Bitter

We had arranged for Tony's parents to come stay overnight with the babies this weekend so we could have a belated date night to celebrate our anniversary.  This would have been our first time leaving the kids overnight with someone else.  Our plan was to stop at Babies R Us to do some Christmas shopping on our way to Portland for the evening.  Then we were going to go to a comedy club, something we'd never done before.  What I was most looking forward to was our hotel stay and being able to sleep in as loooonnnnggggg as I wanted in the morning.  I think we also really could have used that husband and wife adult time, by ourselves.

Instead, Tony will be leaving early tomorrow morning and catching a plane to Mexico for a mission trip with his work company.  The purpose of the trip is to help fit hearing aids to those in need, that are living in poverty.  This is something that his company does at least once/year in different areas around the world, but it's the first time that Tony has been invited to go.  He was asked only two weeks ago, which means we've had to scramble to get everything lined up so he can go.  The scramble: getting a passport expedited. 

Tony tried to contact the post office in Eugene, which issues passports, but they NEVER returned his phone call.  He actually went into the post office directly, but they told him he had to call to schedule an appointment.  Of course it's only an automated answering system when he calls.  Dead end.  We went to the post office here in town, but they couldn't do an 8-10 day expedite.  They would have needed 4 weeks.

So Tony's only option was to make a 5 hour drive to Seattle to have one issued. He left after work last Monday and stayed overnight at a friend's house so that he only another 3 hours to drive Tuesday morning.  His appointment was at 10:30am in Seattle.  He was then given the option of coming back on Thursday to pick up his passport, or hang around in Seattle to pick it up that afternoon.  Taking another day off work and driving back and forth to pick up his passport wasn't an option, so it turned into another night of me solo parenting because he got home so late that night.  But, passport was in hand!

He would have chosen not to go on this trip if I'd asked him to, but that's just not something I would have done.  This is an amazing opportunity that he gets to be a part of and who knows when and if he will ever be given the opportunity again.  If I were him, I would have wanted to go, so I wasn't about to hold him back from it.

While I'm definitely not mad about it, I can't help but feel a little bitter disappointment.  Instead of our overnight anniversary date, I will be solo parenting for another 5 days.  The babies and I will be spending Saturday night at Tony's parents (which I am not looking forward to), and they will then babysit Sunday for a few hours so that I can go watch a few softball games without the kids in tow (which I AM looking forward to).  I appreciate the chance to spend a few hours by myself watching some of the players we once coached now play in their college softball games, it is very small potatoes in comparison to actually having an overnight anniversary date and a chance to ADULT.

On top of that, it's not even something we can reschedule.  The money we had set aside for our night in Portland has been spent on expediting his passport, paying airport parking and luggage fees, and any other incidentals that come up.  Sigh.