Baja (Not So) Fresh

One of my favorite places to get burritos is Baja Fresh. There was one a mile from our apartment in Rutherford, NJ. My daily activity during my maternity leave with Aidan was walking to Baja Fresh with Aidan in the stroller to get my burrito. I haven't had it since we left New Jersey, but I've been dreaming about it. If you have a Baja Fresh near you, please go there and appreciate your local shop, you never know when you get another burrito.

Their website shows a location in Rolling Meadows, IL. Every time I visit Chicago, I think about going there, but the timing is never right. This trip, I vowed that I would finally get my burrito. My mouth was watering just thinking about it. Jennifer invited me, Aidan and Reese to stay with her at her hotel and I told her I would treat her to dinner at Baja Fresh.

We got ready to leave for dinner and my Aunt Jill rode with us to the restaurant. My Uncle Jeff was planning to meet us at Baja Fresh to pick up Jill to take her home. Earlier that day I drove with Jill to my nephew Elijah's birthday party, Jeff rode his motorcycle to the party and Jill would have ridden home with Jeff, however he neglected to check the weather report and as the party was ending, it started to rain. Jeff drove home to get his car and drove to Baja Fresh to meet us. Jennifer, Jill, the kids and I drove to Baja Fresh, we drove around the block at least once and it seemed like the restaurant had disappeared. I was baffled. I could swear it was right there on Algonquin Road. "WAS" is the right word. It was closed down and being renovated under a new name. I was crushed! I will have to go back to New Jersey to get my burrito after all (not a bad idea if you ask me).

Jill called Jeff to tell him that we decided to go to Gino's East Pizza instead because Baja was closed. Jill left him a voicemail message because he didn't answer. Gino's is one of my favorite places so my spirits lifted and I go my camera ready to snap shots of my kids in one of my favorite places.

Getting seated at Gino's is not a speedy process and the longer we waited, we started to get anxious and nervous that we had not heard back from Jeff and based on the mileage from their house to Gino's he should have arrived in any minute. Jill and I continued to call him and we quickly came to the conclusion that Jeff must have forgotten his phone.

We played out several scenarios out loud about how Jeff would figure out where we were:

• He would pull over and call one of us from a pay phone (if those are still around). Nope, this would not work - he does not know our phone numbers because they are in his phone address book
• He would call his own voicemail and hear the message. Nope, this could fail if he doesn't know his own phone number
• We called Kelsey (his daughter) to give her our phone numbers in case he called her. Nope, we couldn't get in touch with her either and did he know her number?
• He would drive around in the rain all night and lose his temper because we were not where we said we would be.
• We would call the hotel to see if a man with a Batman t-shirt had stopped in looking for us and give the front desk my phone number so that he could call us.
• We would order and eat dinner and laugh about this later.

He did forget his phone, he did drive around all night in the rain, he did stop by the hotel (and we missed him), we did order and eat dinner and we laughed a lot! We eventually caught up with him at the hotel and he was not mad, he was actually pretty calm. He took responsibility for forgetting his phone and I think Jill and I were both pretty shocked that he wasn't even a little upset.

Reese doesn't go anywhere without her purse.

Jennifer showed Aidan how to draw stick figures.

Jennifer snuggling with Reese and her new boyfriend Aidan. I told Aidan she was engaged. Sorry Dave, you have some serious competition! The caption of the first picture of Aidan (with Jennifer and Reese) should read, "sorry sucka!"