Gurnee Mills

In early August, when we still had our rental car, we took the family down to Gurnee Mills, a huge mall about an hour away from Milwaukee in Illinois.

I don't really remember why we went, or if there was any purpose at all.

[Ah yes, I remember now: my wife had gone there a week before and saw an exhibition of live tigers. For $25 you could play with the cats, and we wanted to at least show the kids the beasts.]

Well Gurnee Mills is huge, 1.7 million square feet, and we parked on the wrong side of the mall. So after looking through a used bookstore and a few other shops, we settled in for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe.

This is a pic of the cafe mascot, which Parker just freaked over, giggling and smiling nonstop.

The wife and I had an appetizer platter that included calamari, and one of the few times I've been disapointed in YaYa was when she tried it, liked it, and then spit it out once I told her what it was. :(

For desert, we blew the diet and ordered a Volcano, a brownie/ice cream combo with a lit sparkler in the middle. That's ironic, because we despised the fact that the kids menu portion of hamburger was three, count 'em three, medium sized burgers. What the heck, why not just include angioplasty free with the meal?

Last but not least, this animated crocodile scared the heck out of Middle Child.

And with good reason, now that I look at the photo again :)

After that we stopped at a dollar store where we bought the girls ceramic ballerinas and Parker a toy hammer, the Disney Store and a few more places, discovered the tigers were a travelling exhibit and no longer there, and drove home.

Not a bad day at all.