Hey, hay

After a non-hurried start for the day (unusual for us), we had to head back to the store where we got the girls' Halloween costumes because I noticed after we got home last night that I was double charged for Darby's costume.

By the time that was taken care of, it was lunch time, which we had at a Braum's that happened to be next to a Barnes and Noble. So, after eating we ended up walking over to the book store to do some browsing and lucky us, we walked right in on the start of a book reading session in the children's book section.

The children's section employee (Jennifer) provided snacks and juice, read a book about voting for president, encouraged the kids' participation by asking lots of questions, and gave them short interactive tasks, such as voting for which snack was better. After the book reading, the kids got to color a picture of Abe Lincoln and have a polaroid taken that was put into a little Mount Rushmore frame (that's supposed to make it look like the kid's face is on the mountain) for them to keep. Shelby dove right into that action, of course, but Darby chose to observe from a far, I guess since the kids were all younger. It was a neat little unexpected bonus for Shelby at least.

That whole deal took a bit, so by the time the kids perused cool-book-utopia and settled on that one favorite book to get, almost two hours had passed. It's not a bad way to spend a couple hours, but I was kind of wanting to pull my hair out by the end of it. If only I had a buck for each time a kid said to me "THIS is the book I want... no wait, THIS is the book I want, no wait..."

Our evening event, which I had been planning for a couple of weeks, was a hayride at a real pumpkin patch (where pumpkins are actually grown as opposed to where they just haul them in), followed by a trip through a 5,000 sq ft covered (i.e. dark) maze, which Darby loved, but of which Shelby was scared.

And we concluded our evening events with a kid-favorite dinner at CiCi's. Darby had something like eight platefuls and Shelby had four or five. Both also got quarters to play games for a bit, as we don't always do that when we go to CiCi's because we're usually in a hurry. Shelby decided to use one of her quarters in the sticker machine instead of playing a game. However, I'm having difficulty deciding whether to let her keep the sticker or have it mysteriously disappear.

We contemplated a movie before heading home (since there's a new Hilary Duff movie out and the kids are big fans), though the timing didn't work out (plus I'd rather pay dollar theater prices for that one... it's no Shark Tale after all).