First half of day 6

I'm writing this halfway through the day because I'm not sure I'll have time to write anything tonight. I'll see what I can do.

Today we had an outing to North Pointe Mall. We were there about 90 minutes total. We were free to walk around for the 1st hour and shop. The whole point of that was to getting used to different sounds and sights and walking through the stores accessing their accessibility. Of course, Mika spent time looking for accessories and managed to sweet talk me into getting her two different flowers for her hair. We went into Claires and I was surprised to see Fern uncomfortable in the store. I'm not sure if it was the close quarters (that store is a nightmare of 1' wide aisles) or all of the sparkly stuff, but that was the only time she showed any discomfort at all. Mika and I made an additional side trip to Barnes and Nobles quickly, and Fern was a sweetheart.

After we got back to the hotel, we took Fern down to the conference room and let her play with Jeddah's dog Hudson. We shut the doors and then took them off the leash. Neither Hudson or Fern really enjoy rough housing, so we got out the tennis ball that we bought yesterday at WalMart. Oh my word, Fern loves to play with a ball. She is very quick and almost always beat Hudson (who is much larger than her) to the ball. We actually had an amazing opportunity to practice "get it", "bring it" and "give it". She willingly gave up her ball so we could throw it again. So she just pretty much reenforced her training on her own, which proves how smart she is.

Both kid and dog are resting now before we go out for an optional outing tonight. We're going out a sports bar and grill tonight. It can be pretty noisy, so we'll see how both Mika and Fern do in that environment.