and then it was time to come home... {Fall Adventure 2011}

...but not before squeezing in a few last minute stops at some of our fave spots like The Original Pancake House for some to die for pumpkin pancakes {my mouth is watering as I type this} - seems I'm not the only one who loooovvvveeeesss pancakes!We stopped by the Mall of America to take the littles to one of their favorite lunch spots, the Rainforest Cafe and to let them shop for a few fun treasures of their own with the spending money Mimi gave them...Grace picked out a pink princess leotard with an attached glittery tutu and an Ariel & Prince Eric Little Mermaid wedding set. Hudson picked out a set of animal play figures from the Rainforest and a laughing cow stuffed animal from the Nickelodeon store. They had a lot of fun shopping - thanks Mimi & Pop!

One last stop - the Lego store - where the littles played with Noonie while I snuck off to the American Girl store to scope out in person the doll Grace has been eyeing.Hudson had a blast playing and building all kinds of things......like this "orange juice" tower.And that flashy, crazy-looking lego picture is the last picture my Canon DSLR took before shutting down :( Seems there's a problem with the mirror/shutter so I'm camera-less for a couple of weeks while the folks at Canon figure it out.
Boo hoo.

Thankfully Noonie is letting me borrow her point-n-shoot so I don't go into complete withdrawals these next weeks. I have yet to take pics of all of our fun finds, but I'm going to try and do that in the next couple of days. Just not the same without my trusy 'ole camera :(

We had a wonderful time on our trip - thank you Noonie for such a fun, unexpected Fall treat! And lucky for the little pumpkin, this past week was Apple Week at her school so she got to share with her friends all about her trip to the orchard. I printed some of our pictures and she narrated while I wrote and together we put together this book - such a fun memento from our adventure - and such a fun thing to bring for her Show & Tell last Wednesday!And yes, she snuck into the bathroom and globbed on some Barbie lipgloss right before this picture was taken...sneaky, sneaky...girly, girly.

And I think I must have still been jet-lagged because I totally dropped the ball on her class' Apple Tasting Party on Thursday. They were supposed to bring foods made from apples. Suggestions included apple chips, applesauce, apple jelly, apple muffins, etc. I didn't remember until we were home from ballet Wednesday night so apple jacks it was! HA!Oh well, you gotta have a sense of humor!

We had 2 back-to-back birthday parties today and I'm beat.
Hope you're having a great weekend!