8 hours at a MALL?

Is that a TYPO??

Nope, and Yep, we spent EIGHT hours at the Mall of America on Saturday! Sam and I went to Minneapolis for a work function and we brought Zach with us. He spent the night at Kayla and Ben's ... his first sleep over ever and he did great (thanks to them, I'm sure!!) He loved the plane ride, and we brought his V-smile (with a new game) and he had a blast between the plane and all the tram rides at Minneapolis airport....you'd never have known the kid got up at 4:45 AM! He loved pulling his own "suitcase" around, though he wasn't so thrilled about the security line and taking off his shoes and having to put them through the "washing machine factory". (No matter what we told him, this is what he was determined it was???)

We picked all three of the kids up at Kayla and Ben's around 10:00 on Saturday and headed straight to the Mall of America. We got there around 11, after finding a parking spot amongst the other million people who wanted to be a part of the "Nickelodeon Universe" Grand Opening (formerly Camp Snoopy). They had all of the Nick Jr. "Celebrities there" for the kids including Ashlee Simpson (where literally thousands - had to be - of kids were lined up to wait for her autograph) and then there were the REALLY important celebrities. You know, the ones you'd never in a million years dream you'd EVER get to meet! Does this say it all??

((I mean, if this isn't a star struck look, I don't know what is??))

So we spent the entire day riding rids, Kayla and Ben on the big-kid rides and Zach on a couple of the smaller rides, meeting "Celebrities" (Spongebob and Patrick were two others he got to shake hands with), shopping and eating and playing games.

Kay and Ben went on this ride that was crazy - not sure what it was called, but it looked like a surf board and it went up one side and down the other (straight up and down basically) and you spun around at the same time (yeah, no way in hedoublehockeysticks would you get me on it) Here's some pictures we got from that! Heehee!

I don't know if you can see it in this picture or not, but Kayla and Ben are both screaming and Kayla's hair is whipping around her face! Very funny picture!!

While Kay and Ben were in some of the longer lines, I decided to take Zach who was getting fairly impatient to build-a-bear to make his own teddy bear. (Though he picked a triceratops, so not quite a teddy bear!) I thought it was going to be this nice happy time, but let me give you a piece of friendly advice, never take a hungry (hungry because he didn't eat his lunch at Rainforest Cafe because of the "funder" and lightning) and tired (because there is really nowhere to nap at the mall) three year old to build a bear.) Because if you do, and you expect him to actually give the lady the dinosaur skin to STUFF and THEN ask him to give BACK the heart he just picked out of a bucket of hearts .... let's just say .... it is not so cool. I got out of there as fast as I could, thankfully Sam and the kids got there and Kayla quickly made the "birth certificate" and it HAD to be named "Zach" (he couldn't name it anything else, LOL). All in all, we had a really great day. You can't expect a three year old who lives every day pretty much by a rigid schedule to be taken completely out of it and not expect him to be a little cranky .... so I think he did good.


We ate dinner at this place in the Mall of America that was very "islandy" (yes, this is a RACHEL-ADJECTIVE)....and they had hula-hoops out front while we waited. (Had to post this....Ben was actually really good, and we know swivel-hips Kay had no problems with the hoop!!) :)

We finally got back to our room and basically just got into our PJ's and crashed. Ben and Zach played their games (like 2 peas in a pod) and Sam, Kay and I looked at Kayla's pictures of her Snow Daze dance (speaking of ....she should e-mail me some if she reads this and I can post them, she looked beautiful!)

The brothers concentrating hard on their hand held video games..........

Anyway, it was a GREAT weekend with the kids and we had a wonderful evening out. Caitlin had the girls and she did a fantastic job with them too. I hope you all had a great weekend and are all over the colds I know most of you have!!

Love,

Rachel

PS: Regarding the Rainforest Cafe comment... Zach loved the place, until it rained. It storms in the rainforest cafe every 30 minutes. "Thunder and lightning..." the whole nine yards and we all know how much Zach loves that. Here's a picture of the mascot who happened to walk by shortly after one of the storms. Oh and there is a dessert called the "volcano". He was SURE a volcano was going to "sploosh" (where did he make that word up from, I have no idea!!) and he was going to hit with hot lava ?? So anytime someone orders this desert, the servers all yell "VOLCANO" ... this would send him into a fit of terror!!! The kid has a vivid imagination!