Meeting Elsa!

When Amelia got in the car after school today, she told me that she was feeling sad because she had had a bad day.  She couldn't pinpoint anything specific that went wrong, just that she had been feeling out of sorts all day long.  I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that she woke me up at 5:30 in the morning because her tummy hurt.  Turns out she was just hungry, so she ate a bowl of cheerios and went back to bed.  But even though she wasn't sick, it still wasn't a great start to the day...

Anyway, I had seen that the mall way over on the west side of Madison was having a special kids day out, and that Frozen characters Anna and Elsa were going to make an appearance, so I decided that we should all make the trip over there.  After all, what better way is there to make someone smile than a warm hug?

The girls were delighted to see Anna and Elsa and willingly went up to them to get a picture taken.

They were too shy to talk to them, but we did follow them around the mall for a few minutes until Amelia worked up the courage to show Anna her ponytail holders that had Anna and Elsa on them.  We also got to hear Anna sing "For the First Time in Forever" which she sang very nicely.  She told the kids in the audience that they could sing along with her, but I think Amelia was the only one who did.  Amelia told me afterwards that she knew it wasn't the real Elsa, because she could see her gray hair poking out below the wig (the wig really should have been a bit bigger), and that she could see Olaf's glasses when she looked up at Olaf's head.  But she was still happy to see them.

There was also a balloon artist who made the girls purple butterflies:

And Build-a-Bear was giving out paper princess crowns.  The girls wore theirs for a while, then decided that Nate should try one on.  He was not very happy with it.

The girls wanted to play in the play area, which must have been sponsored by an electric company, since all the climbing sculptures were interesting electrical things, like a light switch and a light bulb.  Megan had a hard time figuring out how to get up on the hard hat, so Amelia showed her how to get up, and then reached a hand down to help her.  What a sweet big sister!

We had a special McDonald's dinner at the food court; I was excited to find out they had a Potbelly inside the food court, so I could eat that instead.  By the time we got home, it was too late for Amelia to do her math homework (draw a picture of a group of objects in her house,, and tell someone a story about it - how is that math?), but we did get her reading homework done. Regardless, she told me in the car that her bucket was all filled up, so I think our outing was a worthwhile success!