Vacation begins

We are beginning 2 weeks of family vacation. Week 1 consists of vacation at home, where my husband does not go to work and we do lots of FUN things together. Things I have planned are: trip to local waterpark, zoo, movies and dinner, canoeing. I have arranged a babysitter for those too young to do certain things, like canoeing and movies.

I did school shopping yesterday and today, to try and get that chore out of the way before vacation, since school starts one week after vacation ends. Yesterday I took the 2 school aged girls to Target and Mervyn's. Target featured great deals on school supplies--$1 for markers, 33 cents for crayons, 27 cents for a ruler, $1.22 for Fiskars scissors. I even got some extra for little ones at home. Unfortunately, my 6 year old daughter, who LOVES to shop, also has ZERO self control, and asked me for EVERYTHING and ANYTHING she saw, even things that she couldn't identify, like a protractor, and things for the house, like flowered sponges. It got so that my 10 year old daughter and I would just laugh and walk away without even answering her. We had lunch at Big Boy. I had an omelette--I love breakfast food for lunch. Each child also got 2 school outfits--one summer (clearance!) and one fall.

Today I took the boys shopping. We went back to Target, even though I had bought their school supplies the day before, because I had to return a pair of shorts that didn't fit, and to look at backpacks for my 12 year old son, who wanted a messenger style bag. I ended up getting a bunch of stuff for the house like bandaids, paper towels, toilet paper, etc. Then off to Kohl's, where they were having a big sale with screaming values. Almost everything in the store was on sale, and when you entered they gave you a scratch off card with an additional discount amount, good on EVERYTHING, even clearance. We scratched off 20%. It was a little challenging finding things that fit for both boys, because the 8 year old is too big for a size 7 and too small for many size 8s. The 12 year old is 5'6" and has size 11 feet and is too big for size 14 pants, yet there are no 16s (the problem is the proliferation of husky sizes, to go along with the bloating of America, so lots of those but no regular 16s), so we had to go to the men's dept. A 29 waist and 30 inseam fits him well, but is EXTREMELY hard to find. We did, however, find a Nike messenger bag that he had seen on Amazon for $40, on sale for $21, plus 20% off! The 8 year old whined a LOT about being done shopping, being hungry, wanting to leave, etc. Famished, we went to TGI Fridays for lunch, which was scrumptious (I don't usually like going to chains, but this was particularly good--did the fact I was STARVING help?)

We began our vacation tonight with a work picnic for my husband, followed by a trip to the video store to get movies. An argument between the 6 year old daughter and 8 year old son ensued (Beethoven's 2nd vs. The Black Stallion), so we got both movies, one to watch tomorrow. The 12 year old wanted to watch a funny crude movie, something like Caddyshack or anything featuring Adam Sandler. I wanted to watch an adult movie with my husband, but watching 3 movies in a row would require staying up till 2am (we only have 1 TV set up to watch movies), so we compromised on 50 First Dates, featuring Adam Sandler. The kids went outside and rode bikes for a while after we got home and by the time they were ready to start a movie it was 8:30pm. Then--the movies could not be found! We left them at the video store! It is now 9:15pm and my husband has returned to the store to get the movies. We decided it will be too late for the younger kids to watch a movie, so they are watching a few cartoons and will see the movie tomorrow.

Tomorrow will feature an early morning shopping trip to stock up on EVERYTHING, as well as food for a family birthday party for my soon-to-be 7 year old daughter in the afternoon, with 20+ relatives in attendance. I placed an online order with Sam's club earlier in the week, which is supposed to be a great service, where they get all the merchandise together and you show up and pay for it. However, the first day my husband went there they had closed at 5pm to get ready for a grand reopening the next day--they moved around the corner. The next day he returned to the store to find that they did not have the order ready, despite the fact that they emailed me to say it was ready. They said it may have been left at the old store, and were supposedly checking, but after some time had passed without any further news, my husband left in disgust. I have used this service once successfully, and this is the 2nd time they have failed to actually get the order ready. I think I may just quit shopping there.