We had a busy weekend. We had been talking for months about taking the boys to Chuck E. Cheese. The closest one is in Sioux Falls. So Friday night we headed out, stayed in a hotel and spent Saturday shopping. We don't really need to do an overnight to Sioux Falls, but it's a nice way to get away. Saturday morning we got up. My husband, who apparently was on a strict time schedule, decided we needed breakfast by 7:30. Luckily that's what time the hotel's breakfast opened. My plan was to plug the kids in to some cartoons and sleep in. I figured we'd swim and hang out and check out around 11. Then head to Chuck E. Cheese for an early lunch and do our shopping. That way we could still hang around and have supper at some place decent before heading home. Apparently, Pat was not thinking so leisurely. We did do some swimming and hang out, but I think we were out of the hotel by 9ish.
Our first stop was Target, where we bought $100 worth of stuff that fit into one bag. Talk about depressing. After that, the hunt for clothing was on. Tate has outgrown nearly everything in his drawers and since he and Cole are the exact opposite body type, a lot of Cole's hand me downs don't fit. He also outgrew his shoes, again. Cole was a little upset that he didn't get new shoes, but he survived.
My big search was for a baby book. I got both boys's books from Walmart, but can't find them anymore. I checked everywhere, nothing. We stopped at Hallmark but I wasn't about to pay $50 for something that wasn't exactly what I wanted. Finally at the second Hallmark, I found this...
It's a little more boyish than Pat would like (he's threatening divorce if it's another boy. He's kidding of course, I hope:). I think it's cute. It was a little more expensive than I would have liked, but it's basically the same as the boys's baby books, just a different style. This one is an actual Carter's brand, where the boys's are the Walmart Carter's.
Anywhoodle, that was our shopping excursion. We did look at new computers, and DIDN'T buy one! That's a miracle in itself.
So on to Chuck E. Cheese. The boys were super excited. I think they watch a bit much PBS, but I suppose there are worse things in the world. We ordered our pizza, got our tokens, found one of a handful of tables not reserved for birthday parties (I think there were 6 or 7 that day), and headed off to play some games. Cole wanted to try a game where you pop balls into a red bulldogs mouth. Tate wanted nothing to do with it, so he tried something else. As we were sitting, attempting to eat the most disgusting pizza and breadsticks ever, Tate was freaking out over something. We thought it was the robotic Chuck E. or the noise. Finally we got out of him that it was the red dog. He was absolutely terrified of the game that Cole had played.
It looked something like this, only red and with it's mouth open, but it was terrifying to my 3 year old. We finished up our tokens on games far away from the red dog and left. On the plus side, Tate keeps reminding me that we don't need to go to Chuck E. Cheese.
We managed to kill enough time shopping that we headed for an early supper at Red Lobster. I don't like fish that much, or even shrimp, but I love crab legs and I've been craving them since I saw a commercial for Red Lobster this summer. It was delicious!
Bear with me, one last story. While we were at the mall, we stopped to let the kids play. A woman came up to me and goes "you were in the NICU." I remembered her instantly. She had twin boys about a month after Cole was born. It was kind of neat. Pat didn't really get it, but there were a group of us that were there for about a solid week together, right before Cole was discharged. I spent a week with these women who were going through the exact same thing I was. We all had babies at different stages, but we shared our stories and understood what it was like. I often wonder how their stories turned out and it was really neat to see a couple of the other 5 year olds who were a part of that journey.
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