{the fat lip express}

So yesterday I had the day off {yay!} so we decided at the last minute to take a family trip about an hour away to one of our favorite shopping areas. It has a nice mall and loads of other stores around. It used to be our old stomping grounds pre-twins so we could hit up DSW, Gap, Old Navy, TJ Maxx and of course Panera.

Trips with the boys there have a slightly different focus though. As in...forget the above mentioned stores. Just isn't going to happen. But that's OK. Because we had FUN.

Now the trip to the mall started out pretty great. We took them to the playground right away and let them run around like crazies for about 30 minutes. Then we ate some authentic chinese food in the food court {joking of course but it is still deeeelicious}

Then we headed back downstairs to scope out a train that we saw driving around the mall. Yep - an actual life-size train driving through the mall. Sounds crazy, right? Wellll...on our way to find the train, we were going down the stairs. I was holding Landon's hand, and as we made it to the final step, his face came face-to-face with the handles of one of those car/carts you can rent for your kiddos.

It wasn't pretty.

Bloody lip and all. Poor little guy.

Luckily we were right next to the information desk and the very helpful lady handed us some kleenex to stop the bleeding {because we didn't have the diaper bag...but that is another story for another day}. She was SO sweet and gave the boys each a card for a free cookie from the cookie shop.

So once the bleeding and tears had subsided, we thanked the nice lady for the kleenex and cookies and made our way to the cookie shop. We grabbed two of the chocolate fudge variety and headed in the direction of the train, which was just a few steps ahead of us.

That was when the best part of the day happened... {excuse my phone quality pics}

Ticket in one hand...cookie in the other.

Its hard to smile when your mouth is crammed full of chocolatey goodness. 

They held onto their tickets all day and even slept with them last night. So cute...

And the hubby bringing up the rear...on his phone of course. Can you tell we are Reds fans? :)

So did we get any actual shopping done while we were at the mall?

Not unless you count the window shopping I did while going past my favorite shops on the train. Ahhh the life of a parent. And I wouldn't trade it for a thing.