Mall of America

Today, Jen and I took the kids to the Mall of America because our conference doesn’t start until tomorrow and what else do you do in St. Paul, Minnesota? (Actually, I think St. Paul and Minneapolis are really cool, and I have seriously thought about moving here at times.)

Have you heard about the Mall of America? It is utterly huge! I’m not going to go into details about it. I’m sure you can google it if you want to. I’ll just say that we successfully navigated the ENTIRE mall and didn’t go broke:

• One pair of flip-flops for Jen from Old Navy ($3.50) and we did NOT take advantage of the 2 for $5 sale.
• One water wiggler toy for Katie and a set of three candy necklaces ($5 total from her own money).
• One small bucket of LEGO pieces and a small LEGO tractor kit ($13 total from Charlie’s own money and an extra two dollars from Jen).
• Lunch for about $12 at Nathan’s Famous (a hot dog stand that can’t hold a candle to any Chicago hot dog stand)
• One bag of cotton candy on our way out ($3.50! Can you believe my cotton candy cost the same amount as Jen’s shoes!?)

While in the mall, we ran into The River Church‘s office. I had heard there was a church meeting in the mall each week, but I didn’t know they actually had an office there. The man in the office was the father-in-law of the pastor/church planter who started the church (about 5 years old as a church now) and said that the mall only recently allowed them to have an office presence there.

They pay $5000 each month for the office!

I also thought it was cool that The River Church is part of the same movement of churches that we are part of.

We had a good time today. Tomorrow, Charlie goes into the Elementary program, Katie goes into the standard Kids program, and Jen and I start our meetings. I look forward to these meetings each year and I hope to be challenged this year too.