Our Crazy and Quick Trip to the Mall of America

This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my Disclosure and Privacy Policy.

Are we crazy? Did we seriously make a trip to the Mall of America?

In August?

On a Saturday?

Oh, yes, yes we did.

Lucian’s birthday is coming up on August 22nd and like every year, we asked him if there is anything fun he’d like to do for his birthday. His answer was to go to Legoland and the waterpark. Now to be clear, Legoland isn’t the REAL Legoland but just the store in the Mall of America that he remembers. And since we wanted to make a trip to the Twin Cities to do something extra fun like the Science Museum or Valleyfair. We thought it would make a fun trip and perhaps we’d stay a few nights.

Then came the Beat the Clock Deal from Kahlahri Resorts in Wisconsin Dells last week. It was such a good deal and will make the stay in a couple of weeks pretty affordable. (Affordable for a water park anyway) Do you remember our trip last year? We had so much fun that we really wanted to go back. My husband really wanted to go back, just as much as the kids.

And so we ditched the several day stay in the Minneapolis area but couldn’t go back on our promise to go to the Lego store. Hence our quick trip there on Saturday. Only, it was anything but quick.

Wesley is in his “I’m distracted by everything when I nurse and latch and unlatch constantly so I can swivel my head around any time I hear the slightest noise” phase. Nevermind that he is also teething and was cutting his second tooth. (Yes, he is still only 4 months old.) So we did not have a happy baby on this trip. The drive down seemed to take forever simply because Wes wouldn’t finish any kind of a feeding and barely ate. I didn’t think to bring my pump because Wes was with and therefore was ready to burst the entire time…ugh.

Obviously we did make it and got to visit this. The glorious store that my Lego loving boys were in heaven. Absolute heaven.

Me? Trapped in chaos. Absolute chaos.

You try pushing a stroller while helping to keep track of two little boys in an insanely busy store like this.

Oy vay. Not my idea of a good time but at least they were happy!

I even had a nice but rather pushy old lady stop me while taking this pic to let me know that my baby was “ready to cry at any moment” and “looks tired, maybe he needs a nap?” before proceeding to feel bad for me since I have three boys and no girl.

Oi vay is right.

After visiting the rest room and standing in a crazy busy mall with our family of five it happened. That confused look you give your spouse as you realize that the bliss you felt at not really having a set plan when you arrived has backfired. Because you visited the one place you wanted to go and know you can’t leave yet but have no idea where to go or what do.

Decisions, decisions. It isn’t as if I would be able to shop for anything for myself anyway in the chaos. We stopped by Nickelodeon Universe  just to check it out and cool off but that wasn’t something we were prepared to spend the day doing as awesome as it looked.

And there it was. The Build-a-Bear workshop coming to my rescue. Their huge 100 milion bears worldwide sale was going on. An idea formed in my brain to have Lucian and Warren make a teddy bear for their new brother since they both had Build-a-Bear teddy bears themselves.

Again, I ask myself, what was I thinking? I want to do WHAT? Create a teddy bear at the store with the longest line ever in order to make a bear for my fussy baby that requires my other children present. We obviously had lost our minds.

After what seemed like a never ending wait in line, (no really, NEVER ENDING) we finally got to make the bear. And what do you think happened?

Some of the absolute cutest and heartwarming moments for this mama as the boys kissed hearts to add inside the bear, insert a heartbeat and proceed to help make the bear and ask a million questions. Afterwards they both hugged the teddy and seriously, that made the wait worth it. Now that is a bear that Wes can treasure always and know that his brothers picked it out and made it special for him.

Of course we have no birth certificate for the bear because by that point we were all done. (And by we, I probably mean me.) We also didn’t get a box because I wasn’t going to lug that thing around the mall either.

And that was about it. After a quick snack of Auntie Anne’s pretzels which were seriously a mixed bag of “this pretzel is so amazingly good” to “hey, my pretzel is super tiny and not all that great” and why did I have to wait forever in line? Because the person at the register could hardly speak English and required everything to be repeated multiple times and the use of finger pointing. Sigh…and we left.

We traveled over 2 1/2 hours to spend about the same amount of time at the mall. No IKEA *sob*, no Valleyfair, no Minnesota State Zoo or Science Museum. Our trip back was equally as difficult with Wes being hard to please in terms of being in his carseat and eating but obviously not with hanging out in the front seat. The only bright spots were stopping at the Tanger Outlets and eating at Perkins for an awesome burger.

We made it home late at night after a much longer than usual drive but some memories that will last forever.

Sometimes even having to make the best of a difficult situation can make for family fun!

 

Disclosure: This post is not sponsored and our chaotic trip was paid for entirely by us.