Exploring My Mind

It goes mostly without saying that I haven't had a lucid dream in a while! This is primarily because of my tendency to lose motivation for periods going on months. The funny thing is, I've been in one of those periods for the past month; i.e. not recalling any dreams, and generally just having no will to do so. Then, out of complete no where, I had a lucid dream last night. It really was the most random thing. Not that I'm complaining! It's been so long since my last lucid that I forgot how good it felt.
I was in a mall with most of my mom's side of the family. My baby cousin, Presley (who is a little over 2 years old), started speaking full, sophisticated sentences and running around the mall at speeds not normal for a human being. For some reason, THIS of all things is what caused me to go lucid after a couple of years of no lucids.
Seeing Presley act like this caused me to think that this couldn't be happening. This must be a dream. The clarity hit me like a truck, and the excitement came just as fast. I stood stock still for a moment and told myself to calm down, and to help stabilize the dream, I held my hands in front of my face and examined them closely while trying to relax. It seemed to work, and the dream gained even more clarity. From this point, my mind was racing on all the different things I wanted to try and do. Rather than do something crazy though, I decided to explore the mall peacefully, seeing what I could find. I remember a vague thought crossing my mind, 'Maybe I should go to the world from my comic,' but I didn't end up doing that.
The mall was quite big, and looked very similar to the main lobby-like area of Bioshock Infinite's Burial at Sea: Episode 2, the area where the Big Daddy roams around. Luckily for me, there was no Big Daddy. ...As far as I know. I ended up finding a store where a bunch of teenagers were partying. Can't remember what exactly the store was, but the inside was flashing with neon lights, strobe lights, pretty much all the lights you can dream of. I approached the group of people...
And then that's all I remember from there. Not sure if more happened and I just don't remember, or if I woke up at that point, but I'm leaning towards me waking up. This is probably the longest lucid I've had yet, clocking in at about 3 or 4 minutes, whereas my other lucids have been anywhere from 5 seconds to 1 minute. Not only that, this is the first time I've ever stabilized the dream (which could have something to do with the longer time, now that I think about it... ). Not sure how I thought to examine my hands for further clarity, but I have read that tip before in the past, so it must have come to mind.
Definitely exciting though! A random lucid dream after two months of no recall whatsoever. Now if I could just stay motivated towards it all.

Both of these dreams took place four days ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting them! Sorry for the delay.

Guess where I was in this one? If you've read a lot of my dream journal, or just glanced at the titles/tags, you'll be so very unsurprised to find out that this first dream took place in...A SCHOOL. -surprised gasping- We were in a room that looked like it would be a Steak n' Shake dining area except all the tables were replaced with school desks. We were working pretty furiously on a test, as if our lives depended on it. As I got close to finishing the test, I saw my girlfriend's ex-friend, who was making faces at me. Guess we're in elementary school or somethin'.

This second dream was the more dream-like of the two, in terms of outright weirdness. My girlfriend and I went to the mall! To do what? Well, I'd assume shopping, but who knows, really? Anyways, we got there, but a very creepy old lady was blocking the entrance to the mall, saying "You aren't allowed to go in there!" She wouldn't tell us WHY, of course. Being the reckless dream selves that we were, my girlfriend and I found a back entrance over the wall and into the mall. What followed was kind of terrifying, or at least at the time. A loud alarm sounded off; we knew right away we were in trouble. In the distance, we heard dogs yelping, and could vaguely see the old lady running towards us with a giant pack of barking, angry dogs. No shopping for us! Gosh dang it. We started to run, although we weren't sure where we were even running to. We were pretty much trapped in this mall now. The barking of the dogs drew closer.

What was our fate? Beats me, I woke up! Always at the good parts.

These two dreams actually didn't happen the same night, the lucid happened the night before last, while the vampire one happened last night. Decided to record both.
I don't remember how I went lucid, but somehow, I was. I was standing in the basement of my grandma's house, sort of shocked I was actually lucid. Then a swell of happiness swept over me, and I immediately rushed down the hallway that led to the stairs. An obstacle was in my way, so I performed a very stylish vault over it. Before I went upstairs, I briefly dwelled on the idea of going back and summoning the girl I like so I could talk to her, but I decided I probably wouldn't be able to, and went upstairs instead. That's all I remember. I do remember losing my lucidity after I went upstairs.
My parents and I were at a mall. Seems like I have a lot of malls in my dreams? Hmm. We were trying to shop in peace, but some scary, pale looking man, dressed in a gothic looking suit, was chasing us around the mall. Seeing him really gave me a feeling of dread, and I decided that he's a vampire, since he resembled one. We ducked into a back area and tried to evade him. For some reason, I decided to leave my parents and took off running in the opposite direction of the vampire, making my way to the mall's exit. I stayed outside, panting, and hid behind a bush. I peeked out and saw the vampire leave the mall, looking around for me. He decided to give up the chase, and went to what was supposedly his car. I sighed a sigh of relief.
That lucid was pretty interesting in the fact that I was able to pull off an athletic-like vault over that obstacle. I'm not that athletic in real life, so it was really cool experiencing that. Especially considering all of my lucids so far have been like 10 seconds with me just being excited and not doing anything. So far, I've flown, thrown something heavy, and performed a parkour-esque vault. Neat.
That vampire dude from the dream was really creepy though. I could draw him right now on a piece of paper because his look and face were both really memorable, still in my memory right now. I woke up from that dream with my heart pounding.