29 again?

A few weeks ago was Chad's birthday! He tells me that after you reach 30 every birthday you get a year younger. For his birthday we got in the car and made the drive north to Minnesota!

Destination: Mall of America!

 Mall of America is one of the places on our list of places to go while we live in the mid-west! We spent a long times walking around looking at all the different stores. They even had a few spots for photo-ops!

Here is Chad at the Bubba Gump restaurant sitting on Forrest Gumps bench.

 Lily and Ellie at the beach?

They have so many different stores! There was tons of fun stuff to look at and play with! Here is Lily trying to play some video games.

This picture doesn't do it justice, but the hagging things in the mall were really pretty too. I don't know why but I really like things like this at malls.

 Some of our favorite stops were the Disney store where Lily and Ellie got excited over the stuffed animals, The American Doll store where we got to see the doll hair stylist area, and of course Lego Land!

I love all the different colors!

 Lily and Ellie found an old friend there! Howdy!

For lunch we ate at the Rainforest cafe! The girls were a little cranky from skipping their nap but loved that we sat right under the apes!

The best part of the mall is the Nickelodeon Universe theme park in the middle!

It was really fun to take the girls on the rides! We started with something pretty mild to let them warm up to the idea of bigger rides.

After a ride or two the girls were having a blast! It also helps that the rides are all cartoon themed so they get excited about that. Here was are on a Diego ride.

Azul the train ride!

 Even the Dora Ferris wheel!

It's a pretty good sized park considering that it's inside a mall. I was so proud of the girls for not getting scared on the rides. Chad and I love roller coasters and things like that so I was happy to see they do as well. They would even lift their arms up by the end of the day!

Most of the rides that we went on were obviously kids rides but Chad and I both took a turn on the Sponge Bob Rock Bottom Plunge roller coaster. It was short but very fun!

 Lets examine the pictures of us on this ride. We sat in the same seat.  

First we have Chad:

 

and the close up: Smiling because it's fun.

 And here is me:

 Screaming.

After our fun on the rides we got to meet some very famous people. They are adored at our house and for the girls this was a dream come true.

We met Dora and Boots.

Lily was so excited when she saw them! She ran up and gave Dora this big hug:

 Ellie took about 10 seconds to process what she was seeing but then loved it!

 We had a great day. Chad is such a great guy; on his birthday he made it not about himself but his daughters. We love you so much Chad!