The Day of 2 Adventures

I've mentioned before that we have a weekly playgroup that I coordinate.  This week, our playgroup time happened to coincide with a story time at our favorite toy store for National Tell A Fairy Tale Day.  Can life get any better?  Turns out it can!  Uncle Logan was home with the girls and was able to join us!

They invited kids to dress up.  Being a former Activity Director (and used to dressing up for EVERYTHING), I couldn't pass up the opportunity.  Plus, my kids love dressing up.  It was like Halloween all over again.  Shockingly, Ryan was the easy one to dress.  We had a dragon costume.  Ryan loves dragons.  Easy peasy!

Allie wanted to be a fairy princess.  It turns out that we don't have a princess dress (we have one, but it was ripped and I didn't have enough time to fix it), a tiara, or wings.  So we put her in a favorite dress with a tutu, lots of costume jewelry, and a puppet tiara that I rigged to stay on her head.  Not awesome, but it worked!

Just before we left.

Note: My camera battery died just after the pictures above, so the rest of the pictures are from phones...or borrowed from facebook...my apologies for the lack of quality!

We got to the store early, and I took the twins to the bathroom (in the VERY back of the store) before we started.  In the bathroom Ryan says, "I'm not going back out there."  I asked why and he responded, "It's different out there."  I asked what he meant by different and he said, "It's scary."  I was so confused.  There was absolutely nothing different about the store since the last time we were there except a few of the staff (all women) were dressed up as princesses or fairies.  So I asked him what was scary and he responded, "They are all talking to me."  We were the first to show up for story time, and they were in costume (only 2 other kids wore costumes) AND Ryan was the only boy (and the only non-princess), so every staff member we met stopped to talk about the costumes (and went crazy over the dragon costume).  It was a little much for my introverted little man.  We had a little pep talk, and I promised to stay close so he wouldn't feel as shy.  Thankfully, he was fine and comfortable once story time started.

There were about 12 kids there - the majority from our playgroup.  Cousin H, Allie and Ryan were front and center (and were clearly the most interested).

Allie and H were so excited they would jump up to answer any question that was asked - which is why you can see Allie in the middle of sitting down here.  D is playing with blocks in the way back (upper, right corner).

D was excited about story time, but was so excited that she had trouble sitting...and wouldn't stop talking...so her daddy diverted her to play with toys in the back.  H was similarly excited and kept giving away part of the story before they were quite there, but the staff there are wonderful and her enthusiasm was fully appreciated.  They even posted one of her quotes as their status:

From the mouth of babes... "A fairy tale is when something magical happens like

someone gets turned into a frog."

They read Sleeping Beauty and Jack and the Beanstalk.  Unfortunately, they lost all of the younger kids by the end of the first story, and all of the kids besides Ryan and Allie before the end of the next story. Somehow, my children were the only kids that stayed until the very end.

Uncle Logan suggested we head over to the Bouncy Castle after story time, so we made our way over to the mall.

Cousin Caterpillar!

The highlight was D finally being brave enough to go down the giant blue slide!  After she made it all the way up and all the way down, she realized it was a lot of fun...and then we had to drag her away!  We literally bounced the kids into exhaustion.  We knew it was time to go when they were laying down in the bounce castles (or on the floor between them).  So we loaded up and headed home.  My kids, who no longer take naps, slept on the way home and a little more after we were home!

We love adventures.  2 Adventures in one day is even better.  Sharing those adventures with our cousins is the absolute best!