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.

What a Weekend

First of all...It's over! It's over! It's over! We sold every single box of cookies we had plus 43 boxes that we took in from another troop at the last moment. A grand total of 1243 boxes of cookies sold this year. Our last two booth sales Friday and Saturday night completely wiped us out. This has never happened before, not even close! What a relief! We could go to the mall lock-in and celebrate.

And that's what happened next. Saturday night, out at Southpark Mall, Fearless Co-Leader and I took all the girls to one very long night locked in a mall. We shopped, ate, danced, played mini-golf, saw "Horton Hears A Who", went down giant inflatable slides and slept. Yes, slept! Here's proof...

Sleeping has never been part of the lock-in before, they usually stay up talking and giggling, but this year they all passed out. So did I. I fell asleep at the movie too! Cool part of this year was the pillow making craft that everyone (except leaders!) got to do. That's what they are all sleeping on.

The Man and his dad are back from Florida safe and sound. They bought a camera while they were there, so someday I'll have pictures up and lots of details from the trip. It sounds like they had a really terrific time. I'm really excited about seeing the pictures from Kennedy Space Center.