From “Father of the Year” to Total Panic: Willie Geist’s Epic Weekend With His Kids Goes Horribly Wrong.QN

As co-host of Morning Joe and anchor of Sunday TODAY, Willie Geist often appears calm, confident and completely in control. In 2018, he was even named “Father of the Year” by the National Father’s Day Council — an honor that celebrates dads who excel at juggling the chaos of family life. But according to Geist, the title comes with a healthy dose of humility. Because for all his wins as a parent, there was one weekend where he was sure he nailed it… until he absolutely didn’t.

The story, as he shared with PEOPLE, begins a few years earlier, when his wife Christina was preparing to head out for a girls’ weekend. That meant Willie was officially on dad duty with their two kids: Lucie, then 11, and George, 8.

He insists he wasn’t nervous — after all, they’re his kids too — but as Christina grabbed her suitcase to leave, he couldn’t resist asking one final question. He called out, “Babe, one last thing: What do they usually eat? What do kids eat these days?”

Christina didn’t miss a beat. She shot him a look and replied, “They’re not exotic pets, they’re your children,” before shutting the door behind her.

Challenge accepted.

With the whole weekend ahead and a fatherly urge to make every moment count, Geist leaned into what he jokingly calls his role as “cruise director.” Instead of a relaxed two days at home, he planned back-to-back adventures — the kind kids dream about and parents secretly dread.

It began at the Central Park Zoo, petting as many animals as possible: goats, horses, and every furry friend willing to say hello. Once that fun ran out, he whisked them downtown to Lucky Strike Lanes for bowling. There, his children perfected the time-honored art of grabbing a public bowling ball, hurling it down the lane, then immediately reaching for mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers — with no hand-washing pause in between.

As if that wasn’t enough germ exposure for a lifetime, the trio finished the day at the busiest entertainment destination in New York City: Dave & Buster’s in Times Square.

If the petting zoo was mild and the bowling alley was questionable, Dave & Buster’s was the Olympic Games of shared surfaces. Geist and the kids dove right in — climbing through play areas, pounding arcade buttons touched by visitors from around the world, and sampling snacks that may have picked up as many miles as the tourists around them.

Mission: unforgettable weekend? Complete.

That night, the kids went to bed tired, happy, and fully entertained. Geist congratulated himself. He had filled the entire day with activity, avoided any significant meltdown, and even got everyone tucked in on time. Parenting gold star.

When Christina returned home, she asked how things had gone. Willie told her it had been amazing — “a great weekend,” he proudly reported. He headed off to work the next morning feeling victorious.

Then came the 6:30 a.m. text.

“What did you guys do yesterday?” Christina wrote.

Geist, baffled but still smug about his stellar itinerary, replied, “We had a great day! Why?”

Her response: “They’re both violently ill.”

One child, she explained, had woken up and left “a trail of tears” as she attempted to reach the bathroom in time. The other was curled under blankets, shivering and miserable. It looked less like kids recovering from a fun Sunday and more like the aftermath of a disaster scene.

That disaster scene, Christina pointed out, was entirely of Willie’s creation.

“What did you do?” she demanded. And he told her — the goats, the bowling balls, the germ-capital of Times Square, the chicken fingers. All of it.

She was not impressed.

“She said, ‘I guess I can’t leave anymore. I can’t come home to this crime scene,’” Willie recalled with a laugh. “I think she would say that weekend was a parenting fail — even though my heart was in the right place.”

Looking back, Willie sees it differently than he did in the moment. His intentions were rock solid — be fun dad, create memories, keep everyone alive — but maybe he could have scaled back the germ roulette.

“Maybe let’s not do the bowling and mozzarella sticks on the same day as the petting zoo and Dave & Buster’s,” he joked. “Maybe pick one of those.”

Still, the experience taught him an important lesson: no matter how well-planned, parenting fails are inevitable.

“You leave the hospital with this tiny baby, and the nurse just says, ‘Good luck!’ There’s no manual,” he said. “We’re all learning as we go.”

For Geist, what matters is how a family handles the inevitable missteps — together.

“As long as you have the fail together, learn from it together, and laugh about it together, the fails are kind of part of the fun,” he said. “Believe it or not.”

Today, Christina can laugh about it — though maybe not as hard as Willie does. And while the kids likely don’t remember the germs, they certainly remember the joy, the games, the animals, and the feeling of having Dad all to themselves.

Not every Father of the Year moment looks picture-perfect. Sometimes, it looks like mozzarella-covered bowling balls, a petting zoo, Times Square arcade chaos — and a loving dad trying his best.