The girls went to a birthday party (no 14) with their mother. I picked them up from her house afterward and we went to Penn Square Mall to have dinner and do a little Christmas browsing. We were supposed to go see Christmas lights after the mall, but we ended up being there THREE hours. Ugh.
We had a nice but LONG dinner at Pepperoni Grill (Shelby is such a slow eater... we were at the restaurant more than an hour). Then we went to check out the shops. Lots of neat stuff out there... Penn Square has some of the better specialty shops of the three major malls in Metro OKC (my opinion).
While walking about, we passed Santa, so the girls had a picture taken with him, which is posted in the album. Santa gave the girls a little Christmas Maze book (a $1.50 value) and we got back on our way.
We were passing the center court on the second floor when we noticed the fountain show going on. The girls wanted to go watch it, but I explained that it might be over by the time we got down there and that there are several shows every hour and we'd catch one later. Oh, and also pertinent is that we passed the bookstore and the girls wanted to go in and look at books, but I told them if we got through the whole mall in time we go back to the book store. Keep in mind that we had already been in several stores and this point, which with two touchy kids, isn't a short endeavor.
Fast forward maybe hour (we were really taking our time, there just wasn't a rush to be anywhere). We visited the Build-A-Bear store (very cool, but not cheap), and afterward Shelby noticed that she had lost her maze book that Santa had given her. Uh-oh, fit time... so she has an attitude fit and starts crying because she lost her book... mind you I had warned her more than once when she had put it down that she was going to lose it and I couldn't keep track of it at all times. (I was already carrying all three of our jackets, a camera, and their colorings from the restaurant that they wanted to keep, plus I was trying to hold their hands.)
So I tell Shelby that we are near the entrance we came in at and would just go back to the car and leave if she was going to keep on with the fit. That wasn't helping, so we turned around and headed for the exit, which of course drew a bigger fit. Fortunately for Shelby, her sister saved the moment by offering to share hers. That got her settled down and we continued browsing the mall.
Finally, sometime later, I think we covered the whole mall, and I say let's hit the book store. I do like to let the girls browse awhile in the book store when we visit the mall. So we get to the book store, find the childrens section, the kids grab a book each and sit down to look through them when... Daddy, Shelby says, I have to go potty.
Wonderful timing, kid. Wonderful.
So I explain to Shelby that the restrooms are quite far away and that if we leave the bookstore, we're not coming back (I'm really not trying to be a meany), and that oh by the way, we've been perusing the mall for almost two hours and you didn't say one word or hint at the fact that you had to use the restroom until the moment you sat down at the bookstore. Argh.
She says she'll hold it.
Okay, so I'm looking through some politcal books about two minutes later and she taps me from behind. Daddy, I have to go really bad.
So I say pack it up, let's go find the rest room. We exit the book store to the children's dissatisfaction (BTW, Darby almost left HER maze book on the floor of the book store) heading for a mall directory, and just as expected, the bathrooms are over by center court. We head downstairs towards center court and we pass Santa again. I let Shelby know that maybe she could ask Santa nicely for another book since she lost hers. She asked him, and of course, he gave her another one, at which point I let her know that I had intended to pass there again to let her do just that, which was why I didn't want her to make such a big deal about the book when she lost it in the first place, and that that was why it was important for her to be patient.
Of course, to get to the bathrooms you have to pass center court from the direction we were coming, and wouldn't you know it, there's a fountain show going on. What a quagmire we have here... they want to watch the show, but Shelby has to go to the rest room. And like with everything else, Shelby is very slow in the rest room. So we skip the show and head to the facilities.
As expected, that took some time. Afterward I explained that we were done with the mall as it would be closing soon, but that we could hang out at the fountain for the next show if they were good because, also as expected, the previous show was done by the time they got out of the rest room.
Finally, the moment they had been waiting for had arrived. The center court fountain began shooting water about in kid-notizing ways. They were thrilled. They positioned themselves in the spot that would get them most splashed and they leaned over the edge of the fountain, practically getting into it. I wanted to not get so wet, but I was quite tired at this point and also comfy in my chair. I did take some pictures of their fountain adventures and put some of them in the album. They got much more wet then it appears in the photos.
It was time to go as the fountain show concluded, so it was then time to take my soaking wet kids out into the thirty degree weather. Great plan, Shawn. Just great.
Lastly, when we got home and the girls got to bed, I watched the final quarter of what can only be referred to as the OU flattening. They didn't just get beat, or stomped, or run over. They were flattened. Like paper-thin pancakes. Only crispier due to the level of compression. And that's all I have to say about that.
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