Everyday Moments: Mall of America

Ashleigh and I traveled to Mall of America in Minneapolis to celebrate her 12th birthday together. It is only a 5 1/2 hour drive from our house, so it was a perfect weekend getaway for just the two of us. Ashleigh enjoyed the break from her brothers (she told me this several times). We decided the boys would have only lasted a few hours with all the walking, so it wouldn't have been any fun for them.

At the center of the 4-storied mall is an indoor amusement park complete with several intense roller coasters. It was very crowded the first day we were there, so we decided to come back at opening the next day to get in a few rides

Enjoying some Dippin Dots while watching the rides.

One of the attractions at the amusement park is a zipline. Since Ashleigh ziplined at church summer camp just a few weeks before this, she was totally up for this course. It wasn't a very long course, but it was fun for her to go flying over people's heads across the mall.

Getting all harnessed up ready for take off.

Here is a picture of the platform she was ziplining off of so you can see how high she was. She is at the very top above the cannon.

Picture time!

Her glasses were wet so she wasn't wearing them here. It totally changes her look!

Under Armour had a huge store inside the mall, but we didn't find the hat she was looking for. We did find lots of games, trinkets, and a book at other stores to bring home with us.

The LEGO store was pretty amazing, even to us girls who don't care too much about LEGOs. This transformer is built completely out of LEGOs. Notice how much taller it is than the people standing at the railing behind it.

We loved the Peeps store, which also featured Mike & Ikes. Ashleigh found a Peep scented pillow here that she had to have to add to her pillow collection. I think it makes her room smell like cotton candy.

Bob-O. This was one of the first things Ashleigh told me she wanted to do at the mall. Build-A-Bear. I thought she was too old for this, but she was really excited about it. There was a 20 something year old in line in front of us also building a Minion, so I guess there isn't an age limit on Build-A-Bear. She used her own money and made her very own Bob.

Ashleigh loves Bob more than she loved her stuffed panda bears. He went everywhere with us the rest of the trip.

We even found Bob glasses inside Claire's. Don't worry, we didn't buy them!

Riding the ferris wheel together. Ashleigh was a little scared we were going to fall at the top.

This was a spin-y ride she enjoyed while I took pictures of her. We didn't ride too much else because the roller coasters looked a little too fast.

The Barbie museum looked amazing, but we didn't purchase tickets to take the tour. We just took pictures at a few of the exhibits we could see from the outside. Seeing all the Barbies made me wish she was a little younger and still into Barbies.

Barbie's very own VolksWagon beetle. It was personalized with Barbie's silhouette embroidered on the leather seats, rhinestone door handles, and Ken's picture on the dashboard. Very cute!

Bob meeting his new friends back at the hotel.

Just outside of Minneapolis is the coolest candy store! We kept seeing signs for it several miles beforehand and I told Ashleigh we already had the coolest candy store back in Omaha, so there was no need to stop. And then as we got closer we realized this place was pretty awesome. There were so many cars we figured it must be worth stopping for. It was a giant store with some very unusual items...