Mall Madness

When we moved to Minnesota my parents gave us the greatest gift ever, a season pass for Colin to the Park at the Mall of America. Because of this wonderful gift I can take Colin to the MOA and let him ride the rides for hours, and I do mean hours. In August his pass came up for renewal and so of course we had to get another one, and becuase Ian had grown so much he was able to get one as well. One day while we were down riding rides we ran into Colin's friend Benjamin and his Granparents. It turned out that they had just purchased a season pass for Benjamin. So when I got home I got intouch with my friend Tera, Benjamin's mom, and we have been taking the boys together ever since. It is so much fun for these boys to ride the rides together, and so much more fun for me since Ian is now tall enough to ride without me! We decided to meet at the mall last Friday for our last MOA playdate of the year. I had forgotten how busy the mall would be. If you think your malls are busy with shoppers this close to Christmas, you haven't seen anything yet. (There was a line to get off the freeway just to get to the MOA.) I really wanted the boys to see Santa, but I hadn't thought about how busy it would be, so when we got to the mall I wasn't sure if it would happen or not. As luck would have it there was no one in line, no one! We walked right up to Santa and the boys jumped right into his lap. Santa asked what the boys wanted for Christmas and Colin, who had been practicing at home, told Santa he wanted Super Mario World 64 for the DS. Ian got this big smile on his face and told Santa he wanted a red present. It was so precious. They both loved it, and they were both very cooperative when it came time to take their picture. I don't know how they did it, they got a great picture on the second take. Then Santa gave each of the boys a small candy bar and said "Merry Christmas". (I took the candy and put it in the stroller and told the boys they could have it after lunch, and come to think of it I think it is still in there. OOPS!) Then it was Benjamin and Andrew's turn to see Santa. For some reason Colin thought is was down right hilarious that Benjamin was sitting in Santa's lap. After we purchased our pictures it was time to ride the rides.

Tera and I attach their passes to the kids pants and let them go at it. Usually one of us will walk the boys onto the ride, but that is about all we have to do, they are getting really good at swiping their own passes.

The kids usually like to ride any certain ride a few times before moving on to the next one. Which is really nice for us, but not for the ride opperators. As soon as the kids are done with the ride they just run and get back in line. Sometimes after they realize this is going to keep happening the ride opperator will just let them stay on, but not always.

When it was time to break for lunch we were really lucky because both Brett and Dave (Tera's husband) were able to meet us. That was the first time we had ever done that, and I have to say it was so much fun, and the kids were really well behaved which was the best part.

After lunch we took a little break from the rides and did a little Christmas shopping, but not too much. The kids were really excited to get back to riding the rides. We let the kids ride for probably another hour and then it was time to go.

Actually I had to do a little bit more Christmas shopping and Tera wanted to let Andrew ride the Carousel one more time, so we said goodbye and went our sepparte ways. I went to the three stores I needed to go to, on opposite sides of the mall of course, and then headed to my car. It probably took me half an hour, but when I got off the elevator there was Tera. She told me they had waited for about 20-25 minutes to ride the carousel because a bunch of mom's were busy taking pictures and wouldn't put their seatbelts on. I thought it was funny, her not so much.