A short ten minute drive from our house is a beautiful outdoor mall, Stony Point Fashion Park. It has incredible stores, most of which I have never visited because they are well out of our budget:
But a girl can still dream, right? (Especially dreaming of that Tiffany & Co blue box coming my way Mother’s Day, birthday, Christmas morning…)
The mall also allows (even encourages) people to bring their dogs by putting water bowls throughout and “dog friendly” signs on the fronts of stores where the four-legged friends are permitted (i.e. not Tiffany and Saks 5th Avenue).
But the best part of this mall is the outdoor fountains.
Now that the weather is turning warmer, the fountains are a great place for Frances and George to cool off and to run off some excess energy. Frances loves the fountains. The jury is still out for George, but he’s getting braver by the day.
The fountains sit right next to Sur La Table, one of my favorite window-shopping stores (and it’s a good thing because I rarely can ever get inside the store to do much more than window shop).
As you can see by these pictures, George spends the majority of his time watching (and chasing) his big sister. Frances doesn't seem to mind the attention at all. How strange.
Maybe one of these days I will be able to repay all of these malls who let us come and use their free play areas with actually shopping; but for now, Frances, George and I are content to mooch-away.
I suppose we provide some pretty adorable free entertainment for the shoppers passing by.
This makes me want to be a kid again! (For one thing, you're never cuter in a bathing suit than when you're a child, right?) Will would be beside himself if we had fountains to splash around in close to us.
ReplyDeleteI meant to comment on your last post, too, but never got my thoughts together enough to do so. Not that my thoughts are well-formed now or anything, but I have never understood the motherhood/guilt thing, despite the fact that I also suffer from it.
I'm constantly feeling like I need to be doing at least six things at once (and only doing a mediocre job at each of these, of course, since I can't actually focus on any given one for more than a minute or two out of fear that all the balls I have in the air will come crashing down and I'll have to start all over) or my day will not be successful.
Why this is, I have no idea. If you figure out how to get rid of this feeling, you will be wealthy beyond belief, because I know we're not alone in this.
Get some rest this weekend! We can't wait until weekend after next!!