So a few weekends ago I needed to take our Honda Pilot to a Honda dealership for some repairs. The nearest and most convenient Honda place for us is Mankato. Marty had to work so the kids and I venture to Mankato for the weekend. Honda is open on Saturday's so this works out nice for us, since we are 1 1/2 hours from Mankato. We have our appointment at 8:45am to drop off the vehicle and then Shelly and her boys come pick us up. We really didn't have plans for the day. The main agenda was getting the vehicle looked at and hopefully fixed before the end of the day. So the Cornish clan comes and pick us up. We illegally put our four kids in the back seat of her vehicle. Zach and Joe in the car seats and Gracie and Jesse are sitting in between the two outer car seats and we buckle them in. Originally we had decided that if we just drive straight back to Shelly's house, which is just a little ways away, and drive very careful we could get away with this.
Well, since it was early Saturday morning, we decided the Mom's need a 'good coffee' so we decide we could take a slight detour on the way home and get ourselves some Mocha's and whatnot, we feel we would still be safe with our 4 kids in the back seat sitting illegally. Then we decide since it is going so well and Shelly is a very careful driver (??) and it is still early Saturday morning (not much traffic), and I don't live anywhere near the abundance of stores Mankato offers (I mostly have Wal-mart and Target) we could venture to Old Navy. Besides it is just a couple of blocks from the coffee place.
So we are in Old Navy. And the kids are being half-way good. Us Mom's are looking at the clearance racks finding some steals for next years winter clothes for the kids. We kinda take turns keeping an eye on the kids... Then we are suddenly pretty involved in our shopping and then there was a conversation kinda like this:
"Where are the kids?"
"I am not sure. I thought you were watching them."
"No I was looking at these clothes. This is a really good deal. Do you think this is cute?"
"Yeah it is cute. You should buy it."
"We should look for the kids."
(A little searching, a little more searching.)
(Good thing it is early Saturday morning. We are the only ones in the store.)
"Hey look, here they are!"
"Oh, isn't that cute. Did they do that all on there own?"
"Yeah, I didn't tell then to go under there."
"Oh, what good kids we have to all four crawl in the clothes rack and sit so good."
So the adventure continues and we decide since the kids are being so good and the Mall is on the way to the Cornish house we could stop there and let the kids play at the indoor playground.
We venture to the mall and the kids have a blast.
I even give in and fork some quarters over for the rides next to the playground.
The Cornish's know all about this stuff since they live in Mankato, but us Malecek's are from out in the 'sticks,' so all this is great, new fun for us.
So then Shelly says, lets go to Barne's and Noble, they have a kids area in there too. (She know all the good kid places, I think she has done this before!). Here we find a choo-choo train and millions of books to look at and a very nice kids area.
We all have a blast again and even do some educational things such as read a book.
Well, by now it is about lunch time, so we might as well eat lunch in the food court. We order KFC for the kids and sit down at the kiddie table. They amaze us again and actually do pretty good eating together at the table. Joe and Zach of course both had to spill half their cartons of chocolate milk on the floor, but over all we are still doing pretty good... Moms are staying sane and actually are enjoying themselves too.
(If you don't quite know what I mean, sometimes going places can be a little stressful with 2 little ones or in this case, 4 little ones).
(If you don't quite know what I mean, sometimes going places can be a little stressful with 2 little ones or in this case, 4 little ones).
Since we are all still keeping our cool and having fun, we might as well go on a Merry-go-round ride which is in the mall too.
We have Joe and Gracie.
And below are Jesse and Zach.
By this time the Honda people called and the Pilot is ready to be picked up.
We head back over there, pick up the vehicle, get everyone back into legal sitting arrangement with car seats and now finally head back to Shelly's to get the kids down for a nap.
After naps, we decide to go visit Great-Grandma Sohre who has been in a nursing home for a couple of weeks. We play some cards, eat some ice cream sandwiches, and again have a good time.
I don't have a picture of the next event, but after visiting Great-Grandma we all go to Godfather's Pizza to meet up with the rest of the Sohre family (the Hodgkins, the Daly's, and Grandma/pa Sohre) and devour some good pizza and play hard with the cousins.
I have to say when we started this day there was no plans in place except to go to the Honda place. It ended up being a wonderful day of fun!!
Lesson Learned: Sometimes the best days happen spontaneously with no thinking or planning involved!!!
