mickey mouse parade!

We headed up to Chicago over the weekend for our annual outing with the Starkey’s. It’s getting so much more fun now that both of the kids are old enough to get excited about parades and Mickey Mouse. Rigby kept insisting we were going to see Mickey and Rowan would always disagree and say NO MINNIE 🙂 It was a lot of fun!

We got there early this year and managed a front row spot…which was awesome. We even had time to walk thru the American Girl store since we were right at that corner on Michigan Avenue. We were actually avoiding the store altogether because the day before we got an American Girl doll magazine in the mail and Rowan was having a heart attack over all the baby doll stuff. She kept screaming “MOM THE AMERICAN GIRL HAS HER OWN DOLL”, then she’d march away and keep flipping thru. A few minutes later she’d be back…”MOM THE AMERICAN GIRL HAS HER OWN BED”…and then off she’d go again. This went on for like an hour…it was hilarious. She was screaming in excitement over it! Rowan doesn’t even have a real American Girl doll, which makes this all the funnier. We got her a doll from Target last Christmas that is the same size as one of the expensive ones…and we never even mentioned American Girl to her before. But a lot of her little friends have them so she’s up on the lingo, and she’s been calling her doll “MY AMERICAN GIRL” for months now. I guess what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her 😉

Our friend Peggy met us up in Chicago with her husband and baby girl (Baby Luci as Rowan says)…and they had just come from the American Girl store. I was telling Peggy about Rowan’s freak out over the magazine and how we were not going to tell her she was right next to the real deal…mainly because we can’t afford anything in that store. But Peggy, being the amazing and generous person that she is, asked if I’d let her buy something for Rowan from there…which is seriously SO PEGGY. She is so nice, so giving and loves kids so much…there’s just no one like her. She ended up buying Rowan a purple doll dress that came with shoes, tights and a hair bow. It really meant so much to me that she would offer and really enjoy doing something like that for Rowan. Who does that? NO ONE. She could have bought her own daughter an outfit or something extra but instead did that for my little girl. It makes me tear up just thinking about it. Ah!