Mall Lock-In 2009

My head is still a bit foggy from this weekend's Mall Lock-In. This was our fifth year to attend a Lock-In, which is a 12 hour long event. The first two years were at our own mall here in town. The last three have been out at the giant mall in Strongsville. The Strongsville mall is better for all kinds of reasons. It has a multiplex movie theater, indoor glow-in-the-dark mini golf and enough space for giant inflatable toys to bounce on and slide down. Plus there's a Panera Bread open all night. My tongue is still burnt from my extra hot soup that just wouldn't cool down.

This year's Lock-In had the biggest crowd yet. 2,000 girls and 700 adults.

A little frightening, isn't it?

Once you get to the mall you have to pick out a camp site to park all of your stuff. We had a cherry place picked out by the escalators in a little corner. We had just set up all our chairs and blankets when a security guard shooed us out. He had some lame excuse that we had set up in the lane they were reserving so non lock-in theater goers could get out of the mall. We lugged everything down to the entrance to the Indians Team shop and parked it there. Not long after that we noticed that another troop had set-up in the spot we got bumped from and they had pitched a tent, a real tent, in that spot!

The Girl is still not much for having her picture taken.You can't hear a thing on your phone at a Lock-In. It's just way too noisy everywhere you go. Texting is the only way to communicate. Here's one of my girls yelling "What? WHAT?"

And big girls know that when there's nothing left to do you go to sleep.