Happy Holidazzle, Peeps!

Can you guess what we did after dinner?  It was pretty dang cold out there on the street for the Holidazzle parade, but we made a pit stop at the hotel to add another layer of clothing before we lined up along the parade route.  This is one show that never gets old!  I didn't get too many photos because I had to take my gloves off to work my camera, and because the guy standing next to me kept sticking his smart phone right in my line of vision to get his own shots.  Grrrrr!  But we had a good time, just the same.  Here are a couple of the better ones, though you can see the phone guy's phone in the bottom corner of the third one.

To see more Blue Monday posts, please click HERE

To see more Mellow Yellow Monday posts, please click HERE

Rocks in the Road

I'm not sure when it started, but sometime over the summer Diva and I decided that on her first school break we were hitting the road.  Our destination?  The world famous Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota.  The mall is so big, and just far enough away, that when we go, we make a weekend of it.  We book a motel with a pool for Diva the Fish, and we just play.  Walker takes her on all the rides, we eat yummy cherry milkshakes at Johnny Rockets, we sample just about everything at Sephora, we adopt a new friend from Build-A-Bear, and we shop til we drop while a very patient Walker carries our bags to the car.  It's so much fun.

But of course, there are rocks in our road.  Diva is on the volleyball team at her school. That's not a problem, we worked our plans around her schedule.  Then the organizers changed the schedule.  So we changed our plans.  Then, because apparently I am spewing bad karma into the universe, they changed the schedule AGAIN!  She now has all her games and tournaments on Saturdays.  Which, you know, would be part of the weekend.  Sigh. So much for making a weekend of it.

Diva is in fourth grade.  Even if she shows incredible prowess on the volleyball court it's highly unlikely that she'll be awarded a college scholarship or anything.  Yet, she's part of a team, and I feel like we'd be sending the wrong message if we let her skip out of her game to play at the Mall. So, despite the continual schedule changes, we've revised our plans once again.  We'll be at the Mall on Friday, stay overnight in Bloomington, and get up before the sun to get that kid back to school before her Saturday morning game.  The things you do for your kids.  Or, you know, someone else's kids that you periodically borrow.  Sigh.