The Grams Family

Today, Eli and Daddy went to Concord Mills mall together. We also went to the early church service together in the morning as the girls weren’t feeling to well, so we had quite the Daddy/Eli day. Eli put stickers in his sticker book on the way to the mall. Once we got there, the first thing Eli did was go on all the car rides. He didn’t actually ride on any, but he wanted to get in all the vehicles.

After that, we went to the aquarium. Eli asked if he could have one of the adventure hats on the counter and the attendant happily gave it to him! Next it was time to look at all the ocean life. First we saw some big fish and not long after we made it to the pool where you could touch the animals.

Eli touched two starfish. We went on to see eels, sea turtles, jellyfish, schooling fish, and more.

There were lots of fun places to walk through, especially for kids. There was a crawl space kids could go in, pop their heads up, and see fish swim all around them.

There was a large tunnel for people to walk through as sharks, rays, and other fish swam overhead, and there was a smaller tunnel for kids to walk through as smaller fish swam around them.

Eli met a little boy and girl in the kids tunnel and had a fun time pointing to fish with them.

At the end of the aquarium was a place where kids could draw and play. Eli and I played giant Connect 4 together (although we really just had fun putting the pieces where they go).

When we finished the aquarium, we headed to the Lego store, where Eli build a store out of Lego pieces. He is used to Duplo, but he did a good job with the Lego.

On the way to our next destination, Eli played on some blocks they had near some seating in the mall. Following the brief stop, we arrived at the book store where we read an animal encyclopedia as we sat on the floor together. There were animals on every page and Eli would ask Daddy what each one was. After the book store we headed to Bass Pro Shops where we went to the big fish tank. There were some big fish in the Bass Pro Shops, but it wasn’t quite as exciting as the aquarium. We looked around in Bass Pro for a while and then left to head to the Train store. Following another short stop on the car rides en route to the train store, we saw the Lionel trains. The tracks in the store were grand, and Eli loved looking for every detail from the kids playing, to the model zoo, to what every type of train was, to which of the model people were Daddy, Mommy, Eli, and Addy. There were four model sets, and we looked at all four very closely for a while.

Returning back to the rides near where we entered, Eli pretended to be an Ice Cream Truck worker and served me Ice Cream. We took one more quick walk through the aquarium, since our tickets were good all day, and walked to our car to head home.