Family Fun Night

This past Tuesday was Family Fun Night at Valley West Mall. My mom was staying with us that evening because she had a meeting in Des Moines Wednesday, Danny was preparing for teaching Wednesday and the girls needed an outing so this seemed like a good plan.
Three of the "big draws" caught my attention as things that Ev would enjoy:
1) Inflatables

2) Face Painting/Temporary Tatoos

3) Elmo and Cookie Monster

We decided before we embarked on an adventure of this magnitude, we should probably get something to eat. We arrived at the food court and decided on Maid-Rite - which might be a bit of a stretch as a description of this particular dining establishment. Good thing I checked my order when I got it because it contained only 75% of my order (a score which would have only landed one of my math students a C). Little did I know that this "score" would drop even more as I could only give partial credit in several other areas.
I ended up returning right away for napkins. Apparently my mom and I seemed formidable enough to feed a 1 and 2 year old without the aid of paper products.(They were behind the Maid-Rite counter so I could not have obtained them myself without appearing both odd and out of line.) Maybe they thought I would feel insulted by the suggestion that we weren't a tidy family. They must have used these superior powers of deduction to determine that we were above straws because I had to go back for those next. When I finally opened my sandwich to eat it, (the rest of the crowd was pretty much done eating by now) I noticed the cheese was missing. I almost let it go for three reasons: I was tired of going back (we had conveniently seated ourselves on the opposite end of the food court), there was not much left for the girls to eat and stay occupied much longer, and I was pretty sure that the sweet grandma lady and her industrious twenty-something latino gentleman co-worker were not anticipating another arrival on my part. They really had been quite kind and patient from the beginning and I felt like I didn't want to make them feel badly about how this all turned out. But, my desire for cheese won out and I returned. My sandwich was cold at this point and so it wouldn't melt the cheese. My desire for melted cheese was not enough, however, to send me back yet again.

With the meal episode behind us, we decided to explore the "Big 3" attractions. When we got to the main fun area, I noticed that the inflatables were LARGE. Something told me that Evie was not going to scale a 30 ft. inflatable and slide into my waiting arms on the other side - especially if she had to wait in long lines to do so. Instead, she was quite content to throw coins into the water fountain until Grammy and I were literally penniless (and nickel-less and dime-less and quarter-less).

Next it was on to the face painting area. I was envisioning Evie getting a little heart or flower on her cheek. But when I saw bands of kids approaching me with an entire face covered in what looked like a cross between war paint and stage makeup, I decided to save myself the hassle of rubbing her raw to undo the artwork at bedtime. Once again, she didn't notice. She did notice what Grammy calls the "Educational Toy" store and what I alternately call the "Game" store or the "Hey, let's go in there, check if they have the Swiss expansion to Ticket to Ride, ask them for it when we don't see it, have them tell us their computer says they have one but we can't find it, have them check and not find it, have them tell us it must be an inventory error, then we sneak over and check again and tell ourselves that someday we will look through every box in there just in case" store. We have done that same series of events enough times to sufficiently warrant it becoming an alternate nomenclature. Anyway, we had a great time in that store and, of course, we left with some educational toys - but no Swiss expansion.

Finally, I thought Elmo and Cookie Monster would be a big hit. There had to be some reason why we needed to be here this night since everything else we had enjoyed up to this point was available any night of the week. But, when Evie saw her furry friends coming she started crying and clawing her way into Grammy's arms. This defies all logic to me, but the remainder of the evening she held tight to one of us when entering/exiting a new location and constantly asked if Elmo and Cookie Monster had gone to bed yet. We took her to the other end of the mall where she was pleasantly distracted by the play area until it was time to go home, the play area that is also not unique to Family Fun Night. Oh well.