Fashionably late

"It would only happen to you guys". My sister said to me at Hudson's baptism dinner.

Yes, yes it would only happen to us. We seem to be a magnet for crazy chaotic situations.

What are we talking about?

When we found out Rob got a day "off" from his training, we booked him a trip home for the long weekend. We then pulled some strings (thanks to my mother), and managed to book Hudson's baptism (even though the church was booked solid until November). The priest agreed to squeeze Hudson in. We got everything organized quickly, and luckily all our family could make it on short notice. The baptism started at 3pm on Sunday. The plan was to leave my inlaws house an hour and a half early to make sure we got to the church EARLY. The construction on the highway from my inlaws house to the church can turn the typical half hour drive, into over an hour. We left at 1:30pm in the POURING rain, didn't hit any traffic, and got to a shopping centre (around 10 minutes away from the church) at just after 2pm. That left us with around an hour to kill before the baptism. Hudson had fallen asleep in the car, so I asked Rob to drive me to Winners so I could buy Hudson a new pair of dress pants. Long story short...the capris I wanted Hudson to wear with his shirt and tie looked so cute when he tried them on earlier in the week...but when I put him in the outfit that morning with his SHOES on...it didn't look cute and trendy anymore, it looked wrong. My husband said in horror "He just looks like he's wearing floods, like they're hand-me-down pants that are too short for him!!!". Um...that's not at all the look I was going for. I ran into Winners and was out with a pair of proper dress pants within 5 minutes. Now it's around 2:15pm, and we decide to stop by Starbucks to pick up some coffee and let my father in law use the bathroom before the Baptism. That's when things went horribly wrong. The car died. And wouldn't start again. The car has NEVER EVER done this before. Rob tried again, and again, and again to restart it. It wasn't happening. It's still pouring rain, and he's got the hood of the car open looking for someone to give us a boost. People in their nice dry cars are not so keen on stopping to help a total stranger in the pouring rain. I started freaking out because once again, this time through no fault of our own, we are going to be late for an important occasion. An occasion that we weren't even supposed to really be included in. In the middle of the chaos of what to do next...Hudson wakes up and I tell him our car is "broken" and he starts bawling his eyes out. I've scared him. He can sense how much I'm freaking out and so he's freaking out. I call my mom (who lives the closest to where we're stranded) to see if she has any jumper cables to give us a boost. She doesn't. And she doesn't sound at all impressed that we're in this predicament. I call my sister, who sends her husband to come get us. He gets there and helps push our car into a proper parking spot with Rob, we transfer Hudson's car seat into his minivan, and all pile in to rush to the church. We got there 5 minutes late. Hudson stopped crying by that time. And in the end, even after all the chaos, it was fine. It was better than fine. Hudson was baptized in front of his loving family. And now we have another crazy story to add to our repertoire.