WHAT A BUSY DAY!

Whew! It's only 3:00 in the afternoon and we've had a very busy day already! We had a great "family outing" day with the kids! We have felt so bad about not being able to do much with them because everything costs money, and....we're trying to SAVE money right now for the adoption! But, always saying "NO" to our kids gets really old, and we just wanted to do something FUN for them....give them a day to enjoy...a day that was ALL ABOUT THEM! For your listening pleasure, I've added one of the High School Musical songs (their FAVORITE movie)! There are actually TWO different versions of this song! A slow version, and a fast version! I kind of prefer the fast version myself (it was a very FUNNY part of the movie if you saw it)! Leave it to Sharpay to totally "butcher" a lovely song!!!

I'm sure many of you have seen on the news (MSNBC) that 41 counties in Indiana have been declared disaster areas from all of the flooding! It has not stopped storming and raining here in over 8 days! Seriously! Thank goodness we don't have the horrible flooding HERE in our town, but it is plenty WET and...not a day that we could spend outside! So, our day began at 8:00 a.m. when dad cooked a nice big breakfast for us all! He even cleaned up the kitchen! Talk about a day that MOM can enjoy too!! :)

This was the only picture of Mom & Dad today!

After all of the showers and "chores".....we whisked the kids off to the mall! We took the kids to Build-A-Bear Workshop....their favorite store in the world! I honestly couldn't even tell you how MANY they already have (probably 8-10 each), but it's never enough! Build-A-Bear keeps adding new animals all the time! So, enough is never "enough" for my kids! Lauryn picked out the Panda. Austin picked out the Monkey. Carli picked out a Bunny. Dylan picked out the Bearemy Bear.

One of the machines got low on the "stuffing" so Dylan, Carli, Austin and Lauryn got to replenish the stuffing machine!! It was the first time EVER that they had gotten to do this! They thought it was fun!

They gave their stuffed animals a Build-A-Bear bath, checked out all of the new clothing....and then we headed to the check-out counter! Today was apparently "Beach Day" at Build-A-Bear. Each of the kids got their own FREE Build-A-Bear beach towel! They were THRILLED about this!

We headed for the big carousel on the lower level of our mall. This is a MUST for all kids if you're at the mall!! It was hard to take pictures once they were on the carousel because it moves pretty quickly! Most of the pictures turned out blurry! But, I was able to catch a few....

Then, it was time to eat! The great thing about the mall is that there is such a wide variety of places to eat in the food court! Lauryn and mom wanted Chinese (bourbon chicken is the greatest!!), and the other kids wanted Burger King (they wanted the Indiana Jones toys that came with the kids meal)!

After we finished eating, we took the kids back upstairs to the little Dairy Queen (new to the mall....HOORAY) and they all got a small ice cream cone!

Then it was off to do some window shopping!! And, we couldn't leave without visiting the kid-friendly wishing-well! Leave it to Dylan to ask if he could get in there and take some of the money OUT!!

On that note, it was time to come home! We had a great time today!! We promised the kids that we would go camping the weekend of the 20th (rain or shine), and we would go to the zoo on dad's next weekend off (as long as the weather permits)! Geeze, we should be getting CLOSE to the time Haley will be coming home BY THEN!! Well, a person can always HOPE, right?!!