Playtime at the Mall

We went to the mall yesterday to find a Father's Day gift for David. When we got there, I hopped out of the car and opened the back to get the stroller out. Alas! It wasn't there! We had taken it out for something and never put it back. I didn't really feel like driving all the way home to get it, so I just held the boys' hands and we walked around the mall looking at stuff. It was pretty fun for me, but the boys got restless fast. We have a game we play at home, where I say, "Go!" and the boys run around and around until I yell, "Stop!" (Or until they feel like stopping, which is more often the case.) So at the mall, when they started dragging their feet and not wanting to walk, I yelled, "Go!" and they kept walking, saying, "Go, go, go, go, go!" all through the mall. But even that got boring fast (who woulda thought?).

Luckily, our mall has a fun little place right in the center of it for kids to play. I keep meaning to take my camera, because it's so cute the way it's designed. There is a "rock" wall about 4 feet high, and when you get to the top, it turns into a "waterfall" for the kids to slide down. The carpet is made to look like a meadow with a "dirt" path and a winding "stream." There is a little bridge that goes over the stream at one place, and if you follow the path, it takes you to a fallen log with a big lazy black bear laying on top of it. You have to go through the log to get past the bear, and then the path takes you past a giant frog sitting on a giant lily pad. If you continue on the path, it takes you back to the waterfall slide.

The boys absolutely love it. The carpet is super soft, and none of the toys have hard edges. Owen did get slide burn on his cheek, but other than that, I think it's pretty hard to get hurt there. And everything is just their size, so they're quite confident about running around and climbing on things and going through tunnels.

We went back there today, too, just to get out of the house so David could get some sleep.* Once again, I forgot the stroller, but we weren't doing any real shopping today. My sister-in-law, Lura, and her boys, Westley and Marcus, were there shopping, so we planned to meet up with them. I think Westley had tons of fun, too. I imagine we'll be going there quite a bit, especially on rainy days, or super, super hot days. It's nice to have a safe place for the kids to play without worrying about sunblock, or slivers from old playground equipment, or gravel stuck in knees... And we get to sit in an air conditioned space and watch. It's so sabaay**.

*David got up early today and went for a plane ride with my brother, Andy. Andy is working on getting his commercial pilot's license. He's already got his private license, so he can fly the little planes. He has to put in a certain amount of flight hours, and David loves it, because Andy's always saying, "Hey, you want to go to _______ (fill in the blank with any place within a 2-hours-as-the-crow-flies radius)?" This morning, they went to Mackay, which is a little teeny-tiny nothing town where the in-laws go camping every single weekend during the summers. So the in-laws met David and Andy at the landing strip (there's not even an airport there) and took them out to breakfast. Then they flew home, so Andy could get to work by 11 a.m. I wanted to go, but didn't think I'd be able to get up that early. And I'm a little nervous to get on one of the little planes. I'm afraid I'll get sick. I never have before, but I did get sick on the way to Vegas in February, when our big passenger jet hit some turbulence. I blame that on morning sickness, and the fact that I was already pretty nauseous, but I still don't want to take any chances.

**This is a Thai word, for which, I have yet to discover a suitable English translation. It means something along the lines of comfortable, easy, laid-back, good, happy... All those, depending on the context.