Shopping in Salem

Today I took the kids shopping in Salem. I loaded four kinds of snacks, three water bottles, three coupons, a Cinderella doll, a Pound Puppy, and both kids into the car.

The first store that we went into I looked at two things on the rack before I realized I had no idea where Grace went. A heart stopping 2 minutes later I finally located her and made her sit in the cart after telling her how worried she made me. I grabbed a few things to try on in the dressing room and discovered that shopping carts weren't allowed so I grabbed both kids out of the cart and in we went. This particular store happens to have curtains as doors for the dressing rooms which is a terrible horrible awful idea. At least it's a bad idea if you have two small children in the dressing room with you that think it's lots of fun to play with said curtain. Not only that but someone was using the room next to us and Grace kept peeking under there and despite my best efforts the poor woman noticed. At least she was nice and said "Hi!" I tried on my stuff in record time in order to get out of there as quickly as possible. Talk about embarassing. That's when we stopped for the first potty visit of the trip.

We left empty handed but scored three items at the children's consignment store 2 blocks down. We got Grace a dress, Ethan some new looking fleece pajamas for next fall/winter, and a pair of Keen sandals in a size that I hope Ethan will fit next summer. They're super cute and usually fairly expensive so for $4.50 it's worth the gamble. The kids both like to shop at the consignment store because they have toys so no issues there.

Next we stopped in at Old Navy. I'd heard they had some good clearance stuff but they were fairly cleaned out. I did manage to use my $10 rewards certificate which made the five items I bought $9.92. The best deal was a down hill ski themed shirt (David will love it!) for Ethan for $.49! We were there quite awhile but the kids were well behaved because I bribed them with two of the four snacks the entire time. Of course we visited the potty twice for Grace during our visit.

By this time I was getting hungry because the kids didn't share any of their Teddy Grahams with me so we loaded back into the car to drive across Lancaster to the KFC. A few days ago I printed off the coupon for a free Kentucky Grilled Chicken meal and also bought a small box of popcorn chicken for the kids to share so our total lunch out cost $2.49. Super yummy and a treat!

The moment we left the parking lot Grace piped up that she had to go to the potty for the third time in that hour. I asked if she was sure she couldn't wait until we got home and pulled into the McDonald's parking lot across the street. I swear she always has to go potty every 15 minutes when we're out shopping but can go all day without visiting the potty at home. Why is that?

The best part was that both kids fell asleep on the way home so now I'm enjoying a very quiet house. Plus I made more money then I spent during the trip to Salem (yay Craigslist!) so it was cost effective to shop. Or at least that's what I'll tell David. I'm sure he'll believe me...