Sunday Snapshot: MOA

For those of you NOT from Minnesota.....MOA stands for Mall of America.
Our house is about a 45 minute drive to the biggest mall around. 
It's HUGE! 
There's an entire amusement park indoors and over 520 stores to shop at.....hello, can you say "woman's paradise"?
In the grand tradition of trying to find things that are free and cheap to do with the kids this summer, I decided to take a trip out there. 
Me....and 6 kids....
in a mall big enough to fit 7 Yankee Stadiums inside.....
big enough to park 32 Boeing 747's in it.....
and large enough to fit the 4 heads of Mount Rushmore in each corner of the building......
Smart, huh?
The plan......
to walk around the mall and play in all that it has to offer without spending any money. 
**I even packed a lunch for us to eat in the food court......like we were going to the local park rather than a public mall**

Here's a fun fact about the Mall....
If you spend 10 minutes in every store there, it would take 86 hours to see them all. 
Needless to say, we didn't quite do that. 
But we did park....go in on the first floor....and start to walk around.
The goal was to walk around all 3 levels and stop and go as we pleased. 
Here's a snippet of the conversation I had with the boys on the way there.....
"Don't ask to go on any rides......don't ask for ice cream or cookies at the Nestle stand.....don't leave my side.....if you get separated from me, stay where you are......don't get us kicked out of any stores.....Don't ask for any toys, not even to spend your own money on......don't embarrass me.......
Other than that.....Let's have FUN!"   hahaha.....I'm so mean.  :)
Alright, so what else is there.....
How much fun really can 5 boys and a little girl have in a Mall anyway.....
And what in the world will they do.....?
Well.....this.....

We played in this really cool novelty toy store.....

The boys looked around in their favorite shoe store.....

And we checked out the digs in the Vikings Store.....

We threw pennies in the alligator wishing pond at the Rainforest Cafe.......

I had zero change on me, so Trae decided to just grab some that was on the head of the gator.....

isn't it bad luck to steal someone elses wishes??....

and ate our lunch from home.....I did spend $2 on a large pop from Burger King that we shared and refilled about 8 times throughout the day....
We got a treat when we stumbled upon a stand with girls handing out free
cans of Pepsi Throwback.......
Um...we'll take 7, thank you very much.....

There were some really yummy cheese samples at the Wisconsin store

Next up was Lego Land.....a kid favorite. 
We spent lots of time there and the boys all built some pretty fun things.

There was this really cool tropical restaurant...but we didn't go in. 

We just had fun with the board out front....

We were there so long by this time that Jason decided to join us after work. 

Here we are waiting for him....

and this is the "show me your muscles" contest that went on while we sat overlooking

the amusement park..

Olivia wanted in on the action too...

Oh, honey....we're gonna have to talk about just how far a girl can pull her shirt over....hehe..

Okay, so by this time....it's dinner time.  We're hungry. 

We decided to get some McD's at the food court.

After that, we had time to go to Lego Land again

and another toy store....

....and pose outside of the Bubba Gump restaurant .....

sitting where Forrest Gump had and trying on his shoes.

By the time we finally decided to call it a day,

it was 9pm.  I had gotten there at 11:45 that morning.  Just to be clear....

That's over 9 hours.....in a mall......with 6 kids. 

But, ya know what.....we really had fun. 

I think we just might do this again before school starts.