Cute kids, cool mall toy, etc.

Last night Dan found a headshot of Tim (8 1/2 x 11 color photo, head and shoulders). He immediately identified it as Daddy, and gave it a big hug. Then he took the picture to Tim's pillow and lay it right where Tim's head goes when he sleeps. Dan kissed the picture, tucked it in with Tim's blanket, and then looked at me and Tim, who were talking and watching, and put his little finger to his lips and said, "SHHHHHH!" I guess Daddy was sleeping.

It was really cute.

Dan just looked out the window and said, "Boo!" I looked out and IT'S SNOWING! I am very unhappy about that. And it was a nice warm day, too.

Today we went to the Mall because I wanted to check on something in Radio Shack and I decided malls and ADD kids don't mix. The mall is too good at distracting you. Daniel was even window shopping for SHOES! Everything we passed drew someone's attention, so it was impossible to keep everyone together and moving toward the store. And there's no place to sit down--not that I could anyway, with someone running off at any given second.

But, right outside the theater, we found this coolest thing ever. There was a large rectangular white mat taped to the floor--maybe 5x7' or 6x8'. I was never good at estimating distances like that. Anyway, above it on the ceiling was a high-tech big black box that was shining light onto this white mat. And when you walked on the mat, the stuff being projected onto it interacted with you!

So there was a black racetrack with cars projected onto the floor, and the cars couldn't get past where Caleb was standing, right across the track. So he started running around the track, and the cars raced with him. Then the image changed to a soccer game with a full-sized ball. When Anda kicked the "ball", it acted just like a real soccer ball, so the kids played soccer with each other. Air hockey, too. And pool. Then fireworks showed up around the edges of the mat, and whenever one of the kids stepped on one, it shot to the middle and exploded. And then a hen showed up in a nest with chicks running around, and the kids had to chase the chicks into the nest. They chased a pig around, too. And had to stomp on mean monkeys to save a cute bunny. And push a treasure chest to catch floating coins, which they could also push around, but stomp on the skeletons to break them so they wouldn't steal the coins. And then there was one game where you walked across, and wherever you walked, grass sprang up. It was the coolest thing I have ever seen at a mall. And totally free. We played with it twice for more than half an hour, despite the fact that I couldn't sit down. The kids came away all sweaty and wanted to go back right away.

I still hate the mall, but that thing was COOL! I didn't know they could make truly interactive virtual soccer.

(I know you all are going to say, "What, you've never seen one of those before?" Nope. I don't get out much. Since we left Utah in December, I've left the house less than a dozen times. It's just too much work, especially when there's no money to spend anyway.)