Shopping, Shopping, More Shopping

I think I've decided that I'm happy for the kids to go back to school. Mostly because it will mean the end of back-to-school shopping. It's exhausted me out - today definitely put me over the limit.

Yesterday was our annual outing with Grandma Smith. She takes the kids shopping and they each get to buy one outfit for school. This doesn't sound so difficult, but for some reason it was close to impossible. At least that's how it seemed when we started.

Everyone started in good spirits - I had the kids bring socks because we were also going to be getting the rest of the supplies - namely shoes! This is what Jake looked like walking into the mall...see the elevated hat? Jake's head isn't normally this tall...

This was the reason...

His socks were being held in his hat. When I saw this and went to take a picture (in the entry of the mall) Maddie walked up to Grandma Smith, rolled her eyes and said, "Camera-woman." She hasn't really gotten yet that I'll probably live to embarrass her in years to come.
So - off to our Target headquarters where we normally are able to find everything we need. Normally, you say? Yes...today Target let us down in a big way. No outfits, no shoes. And it was a different Target so I didn't know where they had all their aisles and didn't feel like chasing every other thing down on our remaining list, so we left disappointed.
This meant we shopped the rest of the mall. We hit JCPenney's where we actually managed to find some good outfits (whew!). But by this time of being done with outfit shopping (still no shoes!) we were starving so we decided to head to lunch. After much debate we ended up Biaggi's. No disappointment there though. Mom and I each had a glass of wine and toasted the beginning of school - as all mom's start to do this time of year!



Feeling incredibly full we took on shoe shopping - Kohls, Payless, Sears. Then we realized Maddie had left her purse and Biaggi's so it was back to the restaurant. After that I knew I was done. Mom suggested Walmart for shoes, which is a great thought, but I told her nope...the day was done in shopping.

So we dropped off Grandma, headed home and I took a nap on the couch. I was completely exhausted - I don't know how Maddie and Jake can have the energy they do. I mean - Jake literally jumped through every store. LITERALLY. At one point he was doing this weird walk that resembled roller-blading through the Sears aisles. At Payless he would stand on the bench and jump off - two times before he got my message that he needed to be done with that. Soon I heard another jump and looked at him...he said, "but I didn't jump off the bench, I just jumped across the floor." As soon as we were home both kids were raring to go play with friends or upstairs or wherever. As mom said, "to have half their energy!"

So we'll have to head out for round - I don't even know, round 16? of shopping for school. Hopefully they won't be barefoot on the first day.