the birth of a mall rat

I've found my second home.

This mall is fabulous. I've heard it was a good mall, though I've never been out there before this week. I was always interested because I knew they had outlet stores, it just never made it very high up on my list of must do's.
Well now I've been there twice in one week, that's how much I love it. Twice in three days to be precise.
I took the kids out there this past Thursday. This mall has an entire wing they call the PBS kids Backyard. It's a whole huge play area with a full sized playground (full size climbers and slides indoor!) and there are all the PBS kids characters all around. Clifford, Calliou, Arthur, Sesame Street, etc. Once a month they have a kids activity; this week they had a story time and a short video and a great Thanksgiving craft time. So we went over for that. The kids had a blast.

After we storied and crafted and played, we took a jaunt around the mall to see what they had in store for us. Not only do they have all the basic mall staples, but they have numerous outlet stores like Carters, Gap, Nike and more than I can name. There's also a whole wing of arcade, mini golf, sports stores and the ice rink which is where the Blues practice. And they were practicing while we were there on Thursday. We stopped in to watch a bit.
Now Sawyer has a little mini hockey set, and we play it around here and there (he basically considers it a version of golf), but I don't think he's ever seen hockey in true form. Let me tell you, this kid was in heaven. He was pressed right up against the glass behind the goal while the whole team happened to be running plays on that end setting up goal shots. He was in awe. I've never seen his eyes so big! He kept looking at me in amazement saying, "FAST!" and "WOAH!" and even a few "aaaah's" as he was pretending to be scared of the goalie mask (a little residual Halloween angst), but everytime the puck went into the net, his little hands when up above his head and he shouted "GOAL!!!". We watched for about 20 minutes before I had to tear him away to get Savannah to school on time, and he had the biggest fit I've seen in quite awhile because he didn't want to leave the ice. It was pretty cute.
So I've decided we're going to be visiting this little mall here quite often. I don't even have to shop and spend money... it's a big enough playground and huge walking mall with the games and ice rink that we could spend one morning a week there and I wouldn't even be compelled to shop at all. Okay, I might have to pop into the Gap outlet once in awhile, but really is that so bad?
I'm won over.

Had a girls' shopping excursion over there today as well. Kasey and her mom and sister and I spent about 4 hours over there; got some Christmas shopping done, got some lunchtime done, and got some good girl-time done. And then we were pretty much done ourselves. Did I mention it's a BIG MALL?!! I was ready for a nap.

Kasey and I also went out this evening for a drink and dessert at Red Robin. Good stuff.

Thanks for taking the time to hang out with me Kase. I had so much fun today and I really enjoyed talking with you tonight. It's good to have great friends to really talk with, and I hope you know you are definitely one of those for me! I wish we lived closer... but like we said, a 90 minute drive is sure better than a 8 hour or four day drive like before!! Hopefully in another year or two we can whittle that down even more.