The Family Shopping Outing

Yesterday was our first full "outing" with the whole family since Rebecca was born. We had a few tough times, but we all survived.

Our first stop was at Kathryn's pre-school for a fundraising Fun Fair. I volunteered to help, and was assigned to the Bean-Bag Bucket Toss (like Bozo buckets, with candy in each bucket). The kids were mostly around that happy age that delights in everything (somewhere between 2 and 6) so I had a blast! Kristin took Kathryn and Rebecca around to the other games, and Kathryn came back with a lot of goodies.

Then we drove down to Pita Inn for lunch. Kristin doesn't like it as much as Kathryn and I do, but she still enjoys it in moderation. After that, we hit the main object of our day: Woodfield Mall. We found some early Christmas gifts, and some birthday gifts for Kathryn and for my mother. And we did a lot of walking.

I particularly enjoyed one moment, during dinner at Ruby Tuesday's. Rebecca started getting hungry, and the nearby Motherhood Maternity store allows breast-feeding in their fitting rooms. But our food had just arrived, and Kristin naturally wanted to eat a bit before being chased out with Rebecca. So I held her for a while, using my pinky knuckle to satisfy Rebecca for as long as I could (see the post Rebecca's Habits). Of course, now I can't eat, since both of my hands are occupied. So Kathryn used my fork to feed me some of my pasta while I held Rebecca.

And another notable occurrence: Kathryn's been coloring her speech with many little extra flourishes lately, as in this example yesterday, "It's a good thing I got that 'Get Out of Jail Free' card, because on the very next turn... BAM... I landed right on the 'Go to Jail' space." For some reason, that "BAM" really cracked me up.