The Night that wasn't Supposed to be

Last night was not in the stars for me to be a good night. It started a week ago and I should have just given up then. Tyler comes home from school with a flyer that says that there will be a kindergarten parent/child pumpkin carving night on Tuesday. We think it's such a fun idea and totally get Tyler excited to go with Derek. Then a few days later our friends invite us to go to a corn maze with them - a couples only evening that would be lots of fun. So I tell her that it sounds great, we're in, and then I remember that we've got the pumpkin carving that night. She has a kindergartener too so I tell her that's the same night and she says she'll think about moving the date of the corn maze. Later I hear that she'd already invited too many people to change the date. So Derek and I are left with this decision of what to do. So we feel Tyler out to see how badly he wants to go and he's not budging on how great this is going to be so we're kind of stuck. Then I talk to my friend Kim who has a first grader and she's telling me how great the pumpkin carving is and how she's really surprised that we'd skip it to go to a corn maze for ourselves. Then she says, "well I don't want to tell you what to do, but at our house, our kids come first." - someone remove the knife from heart please! I'm just dying and right then and there I'm comitted to the pumkin carving and hope that everyone knows I'm all about my kids too!
So then Derek and I go into Plan B operation - how can we do BOTH? We think about maybe we could do the maze fast and get to the carving a little late - and then we think about doing the carving and then meeting up with them for dessert . . . so we're trying to get a plan. We get a babysitter but that's as far as we can get the plan. In the middle of our dillema we realize that Derek also has Pack Night that night and he really needs to be there. So put that on the list of places we need/want to be at last night.
By Monday morning we agree that will skip the maze, get out of Pack Night, and go to carving like responsible parents. And then comes the bombshell - Derek gets off the phone with his manager and says, "I have to be on the next flight to California and I'll be back Thursday." Is that night cursed or what? So I tell my friend that we're out and she says, "oh yeah, we cancelled it because everyone wanted to go to the carving" (aka - no one else was throwing their kids under the bus but us!)
So I make a plan - I'm going to keep my babysitter for the girls, and I'm going to take Tyler to the carving. So that afternoon we cleaned out our pumpkin, talked about how he wanted to carve it, looked at jack-o-laterns on on the internet to get ideas and we're both pumped. Then my friend calls that night and says, "hey I know Derek's out of town - would you like my husband to take Tyler with him?" "no, I say, thanks but I'm taking him and we've got it all worked out". So I get off the phone and tell Tyler that he'd been invited, and wasn't that nice, thinking it would just make him feel good - no, now he has a fit because I'd said 'no'! He loves boys, doesn't want to go with girls (ME), never gets to go in anyone else's car - the whole nine yards on how this is the worst case of injustice ever inflicted! Cursed, I know. So I just have to say, "we're getting the babysitter in 20 minutes, I am taking to the carving and we're going to have fun dang it!".
So we get the babysitter, leave the girls, and off we go. There weren't many moms there but that didn't stop us - we carved our pumpkin and just had a great time adding more things to our already lame pumpkin (i.e. mustache, ears, and eyebrows!). All the dad there had pumpkin carving tools and patterns and Tyler and show up with a pumpkin and a knife! Then they had the kids put the pumpkins on a table and we walked around the table to see everyone's. The kids sang three songs and the night was over.
On the way out I tell Tyler I'll take him to get an ice cream and he said he'll go if it's a doughnut - so off we went to Krispy Kreme. They were just making them so we got them for free (which I didn't know happened because it was the first time I'd ever been inside a Krispy Kreme!). So the night ended ok, despite the forces of nature that had other ideas.