Briam's Family Blog

Time for a treat.  All this running around is making us hungry, and Megan (since before I got here) was asking me for Pizza.  One of the kids favorite foods.  So we gathered the troops and headed to a strange placed called “a mall”.  This ‘mall’ was called Mall del Sol (Mall of the Sun).  A strange a magical place, where no matter what part of the world you are in, you are transported to a standardized sterile environment of comfort.  The air conditioning flows strong, and the food court rang the familiar names which put the smiles one the kid’s faces…

 

 

 

“Pizza Hut” was the mantra for the evening…. And the kids chanted “Pizza! Pizza!..”  …and a promise is a promise, so we waited.  The kids have been trying a lot of different foods, or foods that are a little different here, but some favorites never change.

 

 

 

The order was placed… the kids waited for the personal serving pleasures.  They talked about how they were going to eat the whole thing all at one time… and I joked about how I had ordered each of them their favorite.  Elephant Pizza!!!   “…NO Papi!!  Yuck!!”   ...someday I am going to have to try Elephant...

 

 

Pizza Pizza Pizza  Sometimes its more the emotion or the memory of a thing than the actual thing itself.  Like when you go back to a place you had not been to in many years, and it looks smaller… different.  Or you had your most favorite food from that favorite place…. You come back years later and you think that they must have changed their secret recipe.

 

 

Well, my old elementary school did not shrink…I got bigger… (or my memory[image] was getting bigger)  It wasn’t Paola’s favorite pizza place in New York that changed their time honored secret recipe (the same guy was still there making the pizzas)…It was Paola who had changed…

 

 

Enough philosophy.  Now time for some games.  What mall would be a mall without some distractions for the kids…(and adults)

 

 

If you have ever watched kids play in ‘game/arcade’ places you quickly pick up on the fact that it could be a flying bucket for all they care… and the kids would still have a blast.  Maybe it’s the lights and sounds… or just the motion…. Or the thought that someone may drop some coins in the machine and their may be an opportunity to carry out the attack plans on a neighboring sibling.

 

 

…or maybe the kids just dream of getting on a plane…and taking a trip to a magical land where their parents let them eat all the junk food and candy they can stand.

 

 

…maybe it was all the ice cream they ate before we played… or maybe it was just the novelty of visiting this fun filled place…with my sugar jacked up kids…but a wave of nostalgia hit me… and thought back (..way back)... I remember also trying to gun down my brothers and sisters in an arcade…  …ah good times…. Good times.