Long Weekend

Because we took it fairly easy this weekend (it was not the action packed weekend I briefly had planned) I'm going to show you a lot of pictures and pretend we were on the move every second. Ok? Good. Not that we didn't do fun stuff, it's just that on Thursday night I was a click away from a spontaneous Disney weekend and had to be talked down from my "I MUST GO THERE NOWWWWWWWWWWW" ledge by my loving and amazingly tolerant hubby.

Anyway.

There's a mall to the south of us, a good 45 minute drive away, that has a great indoor play area. Great for around here anyway. Those of you who have great mall play areas 5 minutes from your house can shush. This one is so far away that we apparently haven't been there since Lilli was 7 days old. I know because I just looked through my photo files to see if my suspicions were correct. They were.

At any rate, it's swamp themed, very appropriate for Florida, and the girls loved it.

Elizabeth having conquered the snapping turtle:

Poor Lilli, lost and floating out among the cypress:

Apparently captured by a dragonfly?

Elizabeth showing that dragonfly why it shouldn't mess with her sister:

So yes, they loved it, but I, who had dreams of Mickey and princesses, however briefly, was not satisfied. We JUST WERE NOT HAVING ENOUGH FUN!

So I forgot I had toddlers and took them to Build-a-Bear. I'm actually kind of against this, I think they're too young, they're already overflowing with stuffed animals, they don't get the whole little ceremony where you kiss the bears heart and promise all sorts of things before inserting it into the fresh stuffed bear (although they eagerly participated)...yeah. Normally I'm against it. But I fell sucker to Lilli's immediately calming from an "I desperately need a nap" freak out as we walked by the store and went for it.

Elizabeth did actually understand more of it than I was expecting, and was quite happy to press the pedal to stuff both girls' bears:

And they both eagerly gave their bears a bath (over and over again):

And Elizabeth LOVES her bear (she named her Cubby), but the time of day is just not conducive to building in my opinion. At least the bear is smiling in the below shot:

I'm completely sparing you from the picture of Lilli screaming in apparent agony as I tried to get her to pose next to her sister with their bears.

It took a little sugar to restore her normal good natured mood. Did you know that the DQ people will very kindly put your smoothie in two cups since it only comes in one (giant) size? They're nice like that.

The girls were completely done in and it was only Saturday morning!

We took it really easy Saturday night and Sunday, just did errands and played around the house. This morning, having been re-bit by my "WE MUST HAVE FUNNNNNN" bug, and having agreed to meet some friends there, we went to an Open Jump at our local Pump It Up. I've mentioned that place before, it has giant bouncy things and is a lot of fun, but we've only been there for birthday parties before since the normal Open Jump days are not working mom-friendly. The place was packed, but the girls had a great time and once again wore themselves out.

I was so proud of Elizabeth, today was the first time she was able to climb the vertical wall completely unassisted. And she just scrambled right up. She insisted that I climb up with her and slide down more times than I care to remember. When I was making cupcakes this evening I couldn't figure out why my mixer was so heavy, and then it came back to me that I'd had an unintended workout. *sigh*

A bounce house is totally the place to be:

Even Lilli shocked me with her climbing agility today. I was too busy getting ready to catch her should she fall off this wall to take her picture (and so I only have her at the bottom), but she made it quite a ways up before she got tired. I'm very interested to see what she decides to be when she grows up. She's a tough little thing.

Poor Elizabeth. She was asking today if we could go back to the mall, meaning the very far away one, and I said probably not because it takes so long to get there. She heaved a sigh and in a defeated tone said "yeah, its too far away. The mall is too far away, Monkey Playhouse is too far away, and the Aquarium (meaning the Tampa Bay one, that we went to a couple months ago and she loved) is too far away." And then she heaved another sigh. Poor thing. I can't help it that this city is not made for children. It's a lot better than it was when we moved here 6 years ago, but it has a long way to go.

Tonight we had my parents over to celebrate my mom's birthday tomorrow. In answer to the e-mails I've been getting asking how she's doing, the answer is that she's doing pretty well. She's been dealing with infections and that sort of thing, which is a pain, but the actual site of the lumpectomy is healing nicely. So yay! But anyway, she's turning a year older tomorrow. Something I'm grateful for in case I haven't mentioned it. So we celebrated. But in the preparations, my post Pump-it-Up afternoon was a whirlwind of baking and cooking and now I'm pretty pooped. Which of course is never something I can explain without a back story it seems.

I had purchased a cake for my mom, thinking that would be one less thing to take care of this afternoon, but after an entire weekend of the girls asking me for cupcakes I humored them, knowing full well that Elizabeth will just lick the icing off, and Lilli will only eat the cake part, and I'm not supposed to eat them at all. We'll see how long I resist, because if there's something that I love, it's a cupcake.

Yummy, eh?