carter's birthday present

i must have lost my mind because after 5 full days of inservice and back to school for the kids and me, we loaded up the beast (our expedition) with meme & papaw and headed to atlanta to visit grammie & papa joe. that was not our only purpose, but to also complete carter's birthday celebration with a magical trip to the . . .

after a long drive after preschool and a late friday night waiting for josh to arrive after work, the girls (carter, mommy, meme & grammie) headed to the american girl boutique. it was absolutely overwhelming and amazing. it is a little girl's paradise and every female who enters the doors is riveted by the amazing characters, adorable accessories, attention to detail, and intense desire to purchase. it is set up like a museum with all the dolls & accessories on display and the boxes to purchase underneath. each item is carefully wrapped in logo tissue paper and placed in a logo box. the store is extremely well organized and the sales people full of customer service. many of you know the cost of said merchandise, but in the stores, the lines are long and the merchandise is flying off the shelves. then, there is a bistro and a doll salon. the doll salon was impressive. on  a saturday morning at 11:00 am there were 4 stylists and a 45 minute wait-seriously! there were families with multiple girls buying each a doll and the accessories. carter has wanted an american girl doll for quite some time. at christmas, she wanted julie, but with the recent cinema attention, she wanted kit and then, right before we left, she wanted ruthie. while her character decision was ever changing, her desire for the doll was still strong. (side note: the dolls say for 8+ but i have spoken with many people who have girls who started with the older doll earlier. we decided that because it was the older doll carter had always wanted, we would let her start there. and also because we felt like if you set it up right, then she would understand the specialness of the doll and would take great care of her.) so, upon arrival, we let carter walk around and look at everything. she literally hung on someone's arm the whole time looking like a deer in headlights. it was so overwhelming. at that point, she had expressed great interest in several things, so we started with the doll. i told her to show me the doll she wanted and she took me straight to ruthie. so we picked up ruthie and then headed to the pajamas. she wanted matching pajamas. she picked out julie's butterfly pajamas. then, we picked out this, these, these, this set, this and the pink chair pictured below. carter was very good and only chose the doll, pajamas, and chair before announcing that she was finished. it was the grandmothers who then asked her about the remaining essentials before splitting our purchases and checking out. we opted not to eat at the bistro this time as we plan to do it next time. 

after all the excitement, we headed to the food court of the mall and let carter ride the carousel.

a photo op with her meme & grammie.

while hitting a few shops before we headed back to house, carter convinced meme to buy her this tiara. grammie told her that she should wave like a princess so everyone would know that she was one. this is how she walked through the mall between each store.

most of her loot on display.

precious!

the next morning

we had so much fun. for the rest of the trip, you could find mommy, meme or grammie oohing and aahing over all the other american girl items we could purchase or make. the guys kept asking who was more excited- carter or us. i think most women feel the same way after visiting a store. another interesting note, in atlanta, the dolls were everywhere. every little girl you saw was toting one along, pushing one in a stroller, carrying one in her backpack, eating with one at lunch, etc. it was the same way when josh and i were in l.a. they are so common in the cities where the boutiques are located. since our trip, carter has received a few more items. her newest addition will be another post soon. i will post the rest of atlanta as soon as josh edits them. that's right, we are waiting for josh. he promised to do all the remaining photos this week as october is going to be very busy for him. 

by the way, we were curious why she chose ruthie when she looks most like kit. it turns out carter noticed the resemblance too but chose ruthie because that is kit's best friend. she said,  "well, ruthie is kit's best friend." so she apparently sees herself as kit. how funny!