Wow! A lot of you read my part 1 blog post on Monday, I guess people do love to hear about vacations that are less than perfect. You are my tribe. If you missed it you can read it here.
Part 1 of our spring break fail focused mainly on the Mall of America. I should say, nothing against the MOA, it was just a crazy busy weekend. I’m very happy for all of their success.
That’s not even sarcasm.
Okay, maybe a little sarcasm.
The finale to our spring break adventures will focus on food.
Yes, a whole blog post on food.
Buckle up folks, it’s an annoying ride.
Our original plan was to grab something for lunch quick BEFORE going to the mall.
Well, for the first time in forever (did you sing that? are you singing it now?) we all slept in and had a late breakfast.
No big deal, we’ll eat lunch at the mall.
Fail.
FAIL!
Holy guacamole. Every restaurant had an hour plus wait. Rainforest Cafe had a 2.5 hour wait. We put our name in and left our phone number at Buffalo Wild Wings because their wait was only 40 minutes.
They never called.
We decided to split up to do our girls and boys plan and meet later to eat. In the meantime, we’ll just grab a quick pretzel at Wetzel Pretzels. Great plan, right?
Stand #1 was out of pretzels.
Stand #2 on the other end of the mall was out of pretzels.
If Mr. Wetzel were there I would have given him a piece of my mind.
(No I wouldn’t have. Sometimes I wish I was more confrontational.)
The girls and I shook it off and pushed through our hunger to shop more. At 4pm we were desperate for food and walked past a Lindt Chocolate Shop. Yes, the girls and I had four Lindt chocolate balls for lunch.
#momfail
The boys were *slightly* more successful. They found a third pretzel stand (Aunt Annie’s for the win!) and had a delicious gluten-y lunch.
We were all five annoyed with the mall and met up to escape leave. We had a sweet plan, too! A little more shopping at a nearby outlet mall, we’d find an awesome sports bar for an appetizer (and a well-deserved drink for mom and dad!), head back to the hotel and order pizza.
We were going to change the trajectory of this trip. Group high-fives and we were on our way!
(I don’t think we group high-fived, but it sounded like a cool thing to add to my story.)
So, I google sports bar. We approached the first one and it looked shady. No worries! I googled a second one, perfect! Until we realized it was INSIDE the Mall of America! Luckily, EJ caught that one before we drove too far toward the hot-mess of a mall.
We found a sports bar that was nice. I put our name in with the hostess (20 minute wait), gathered my family and we waited. About 20 minutes had passed and a few groups came in. A new hostess arrived and started seating them IMMEDIATELY!
It was the party of five (same as us), that was seated right away that put my dear husband over the edge. He had a conversation with the hostess. I couldn’t listen (because of my confrontation issues) but I saw his face. Not good.
We were seated shortly after with a promise the manager would come over and give us free dessert (never happened).
Our waitress pretty much forgot about us for the first 10 minutes. We finally ordered nachos and they were piled high with jalapenos (I say no thanks) and black olives (hubby says no thanks).
Kids had a few plain chips but saved their appetite for pizza at the hotel.
Glorious pizza.
We paid our bill and got out of there fast.
The trajectory of our trip was still -clearly- on the decline. We went to our hotel (the kids were already mad at the hotel because there was no pool) but it was lovely.
Pizza in the room in our jammies while watching “Modern Family” (our family’s favorite thing to do in a hotel room) was sounding perfect.
So I start our online order for pizza. Online because you can use coupons. But EJ was “encouraging” me to call instead. I declined since I was already halfway through my order. Hit send and our pizza would be on it’s way in 35-45 minutes.
Yum!! Except…
Forty-five minutes later the natives were getting restless. I wonder
So I called the pizza place and they said it would be there shortly.
Hooray!
Five minutes later my phone rings. It was the pizza delivery person and she couldn’t find our hotel. I gave her the name again and she said, oh we don’t deliver there. I’ll just go ahead and cancel your order.
I’m going to pause and let that last line sink in for a moment.
My kids offered me grace as I threw mini bags of Cheez-Its at them and told them if they ate them and hurried to bed their hunger would go away.
I was angry. Husband was angry.
And then I posted this on Facebook.
Don’t we look so happy?
But you can see I posted it at 9:45pm. About 10 minutes AFTER the pizza cancellation and sending my kids to bed with Cheez-Its and mostly empty tummies.
And several hours AFTER a disaster of a trip to the Mall of America.
After seeing this Facebook post the next morning I realized I needed to write this blog post. We look happy and I *implied* that we were having the best time ever.
Social media is so annoying.
Now you know the truth. While we are laughing about the trip now, it wasn’t the greatest trip we’ve ever taken. It actually kind of sucked.
My kids were the true heroes of the story. They should have been losing their minds and so angry, but they weren’t. Maybe they could tell by our faces that if they lost it we would lose it.
Good kids.
We woke up Sunday morning all ready to head to IHOP for breakfast.
It was a new day!! All of the bad stuff was behind us.
The kids knew exactly what they were going to order. Everyone was hungry and pumped.
Until we were leaving Minneapolis and realized we didn’t have enough time to eat at a restaurant if we were going to meet our friends for lunch in Ames (which we all were looking forward to).
We got an hour too late of a start.
#finalfail
We bribed the kids with TWO gas station donuts and anything they wanted to drink and headed for Iowa.
This is the reaction from our car when we crossed the state line.
Home sweet home.
Spring break 2019 wasn’t everything we thought (or wanted) it to be. But we survived. And managed to look back at it and laugh.
I’d call that a win.
Until Next Time,
Neko
P.S. In the best parenting move we’ve ever made, we shipped the kids to stay with grandparents from Wednesday through Saturday. They had the best time ever, and so did EJ and I.
The trajectory had finally righted itself.
Hallelujah and the end.
Love, love, love this! I can just pi ture it!
It was very…exciting and exhausting 🙂