American Girl Store

While I was writing about Lauren, Matt figured out what was wrong with the pictures. Yes, it was your basic operator error. So now that I am feeling foolish I am going to do some marathon blogging, and get caught up.

We had promised to take Ally to the American Girl Cafe. Or at least the store. When we decided to go we had no idea what we were asking for.

I should probably preface this with an explanation of what happened the day before. Our first evening there, Ally stepped on a nail. And not just any nail, a forty year old rusted nail that was in a rotten old board. She came in crying and after some clean up I realized I was looking at a puncture wound. A PUNCTURE WOUND! And we are 500+ miles from home and our insurance coverage. Our trips for the next three days were ruined! no Disneyland! No American Girl Store! Nothing. Is she going to keep her foot! What if she gets a horrible infection. (This is a very real possibility!) After some internal hyperventilating, I called the nurse and told her we've done everything I know how to do, we let it bleed, we sterilized the opening, but I don't know what else to do. She suggested a vinegar soak several times a day. (1/4 cup vinegar in warm/hot water.)

Well it worked. She didn't seem to get an infection that day. I noticed the next morning that the bruising indicated that the nail had gone in sideways, which I think helped a lot.

So after many vinegar soaks and prayers and blessings, we went to LA.

It was the longest trip of my life. It took us over two hours to get there, and the traffic wasn't that bad and the directions we had didn't help much. So we got lost. I admit it. I didn't know where the place was. The good news is we only drove by the place twice. But to be fair to us, all the shops are facing in. towards each other and you can't see them from the street. We ended up just picking a random parking garage to park at. Because I figured there are only parking garages at important places.

And we totally lucked out. It was the shopping center we wanted. (It had a Maggianos and a Cheesecake Factory, which I would have gone to if the kiddos hadn't been there.)

We finally got to the American Girl Store. And it was high class heaven. Everything looked neat and sterile. I was happy to see all the things at once and in person. We got to play with Lanie's trailer, and see all the clothes in person.

I let Ally choose though. She could have lunch at the cafe or an outfit. She chose the outfit.

Here are some pictures:
Each doll had its own display. This is Ally looking at Julie's display.

Lauren got a free sticker and she loved the place. She was really good the whole time.
Um...Elijah had "fun" too.

On the way home, Ally asked to go to the bathroom. Just as we got on the freeway and we were immediately stuck in bumper to bumper traffic. Well, we tried to help her find a bathroom, but that whole incident met with disastrous results. And it was the start of some very bad habits from Ally on our trip. More on that later.