My children are a little bit deprived. We never just go to the mall, it's always an adventure of near-epic proportions.
The problem really lies in the location of the mall. It's right along the Sammamish River Trail, which provides so many possibilities for combining some shopping with some other form of recreation.
When we lived at our old house, we could walk down the Bridle Trails trail to a little park, then continue on down the hill to Marymoor, where we could walk up to the mall by the river trail. That was about a 5 mile round trip walk.
Now, we're actually closer to the mall, but the road is not fit for pedestrians right now as it's in the middle of a big construction project. They, of course, started this project right about the time I got my bike, which has seriously hampered my bike riding plans. But at any rate, we couldn't walk all the way to the mall.
So we drove down to the Starbucks that's in the shopping center with the QFC and the new Staples store, got some coffee, and the girls got cups of whipped cream. Their cups actually had a little bit of hot chocolate in them too, but they were mostly interested in the whipped cream.
After the coffee break, we cut across the parking lot to the trail, and walked away from the mall for about a mile, then came back and walked back towards the mall, where we had lunch at a pizza place that had board games glued to the ceiling. Then we hit the bookstore and fortified ourselves with cow chip cookies for the walk back to the car.
The girls had been pretty full of energy when we first started our walk, but I had managed to get them walking far enough to wear them down pretty well, and now they are collapsed on my bed watching the Lizzie McGuire movie. I have to admit, I'm not feeling exactly bursting with energy, either. But I am pleased that we got a couple of good walks in this weekend!
Posted by Rachel at November 9, 2003 05:02 PM