Shopaholics!

This morning we drove an hour to Corpus Christi (the city I grew up in) for a yummy breakfast at IHOP in celebration of Moroni's graduation. Unfortunately, Alegria had not slept as much as she usually does last night, so she was cranky and it made breakfast a little trying. Abuela tried taking her outside and walking with her so that I could eat, but that only worked for a short while. So when I was done, I took over.

After breakfast, the boys went to have a game of paintball and the rest of us went to the newly expanded Corpus Christi Mall. I haven't been to the mall in Corpus in ages, and I must say that the renovations and additions were really neat! They even had a HUGE aquarium in it!!!

Abuela and Abuelo in front of the aquarium:

As you can see, Alegria is OUT! She fell asleep in the car on the way to the mall and when we got there, since we hadn't brought her stroller, Lorelehi graciously offered to carry her for me...and Alegria kept sleeping, thank goodness!

Here's a picture of us girls in front of the aquarium:

At that point, Mami and Papi left and we girls stayed to go do some shopping. We went to Payless because I was looking for some sandals for Alegria, but I wasn't content with the selection, so I didn't buy anything there. Everyone else, however, seemed to find at least one or two pairs of shoes to purchase!

I went into a few other children's stores, but I didn't find sandals that were to my liking for Alegria. So I finally abandoned the sandal search and decided to go to Claire's to see if I could find some new earrings for Alegria. Once there, Alegria finally woke up:

She was in a much better mood after her nap!

I couldn't decide on earrings...there were too many cute ones to choose from! So I abandoned that and we headed over to a little play area so Alegria could stretch her legs and have a little fun of her own!

She almost had a head-on collision with an older girl in there!

Next we went to the M.A.C cosmetics counter for Lorelehi to get a consultation on how to make "smoky eyes." It was real neat to see and the eye makeup came out beautifully! I'll have to see if I can do it myself one of these days!

Alegria and Almalia got bored, though, so I ended up heading out of the cosmetics area with them and going to Hallmark for a short while.

Finally, we left the mall:

Water never ceases to fascinate Alegria!

After leaving the mall, we went over to Barnes and Noble, where we spent a whole nother chunk of time browsing and shopping. In total, I think we were shopping for about 4-5 hours!!! My goodness!

Then we had an hour drive to get back home.

At home, Alegria was her usual self, finding places to climb up onto:

The boys were already home by the time we got back, but I guess their paintball experience wasn't the best, so they took their guns outside and were shooting out there.

Well...as they were outside, Moroni heard a strange noise and found a pair of baby rabbits under a tree! Not far from them, he found a snake!

So he quickly came inside and told Papi, who went and caught the snake:

It wasn't a rattlesnake, thank goodness, but nonetheless, it was quite large and had in essence, been about to hunt these little bunnies for his dinner!

We showed them to Alegria and she thought they were pretty cute:

She also got a good look at the snake, and I was amazed that she signed "snake" all on her own!



I'm so glad that I'm paranoid about her getting all dirty out here because that keeps me from letting her outside the house onto the large piece of land that my parents own. Even though it wasn't a rattlesnake, the snake could still have bitten Alegria if she had gotten too close for comfort, and that wouldn't have been fun!