“Why do we always have to park next to the smiling girls?” John asked today.
“Maybe because you are so cute,” I said.
“No, I’m NOT cute!”
Allright. You’re not.
Today, in an effort to “get out of the house for heaven’s sake before I throw you out” yet not spend a lot of money, I took the kids to the library and out to lunch. The library was fun, although we still cannot find that one darn video. No more videos or DVD’s, kids. I MEAN it.
After the library, I scoured the Happenings Book and came up with a plan. We’d drive Burger King and get a buy one get one free burger, then we’d go to A&W and get a free burger and drink when we buy a burger and drink. A good plan, in theory. At Burger King, I ordered two of the hamburgers listed on the coupon, and they told me they don’t carry those burgers anymore. Oh. I asked if they would still honor the coupon on another burger, and she said yes, on the steakhouse burger. Um, ok. Two of those should be fine. When I went to pay, it was $5.15 for the burgers. Was that with the coupon? Yes. Uh-oh, who pays $5 for a burger? Whatever.
So, then we go to A&W and go in. We’re a little bit more successful there, although my two “Plain” cheeseburgers looked surprisingly like regular cheeseburgers with lettuce, mustard and tomatos. Does that say plain to you? No, they had to go back and I had to wait for them. I’m glad I decided that two of us could each share those monster Steakhouse burgers, because they are HUGE. HUGE. And As I was splitting them and giving them to the two girls who actually like flavor, and I see, what’s that? Onion ring crumbs? On the hamburger? Who does that? I had to tell them to just scrape those off, and ripped those off. Megan and Natalie each had a half, but no one else wanted any of THAT kind of burger. Cole and Jenna at the plain 1/4 pound cheeseburgers, and John just wanted fries. They shared the two rootbeers and the two large fries I got, and I was left with a whole big huge burger for myself.
Ugh. I should NEVER have eaten that whole thing. It’s like telling my body, “you know those 2 and a half miles you walked this morning? Just ignore that because I’m going to stuff down this entire burger which must have at least 4000 calories.” Burp. I have to kind of agree with this review here.
At least the kids had enough to eat, and I did share a few bites of my burger with Natalie, after I scraped all the offensive parts off. Burp. Oh, excuse me!
Then, since we were out, we decided to go and wash the car at my favorite place, although it’s kind of counter productive to try and vacuum a vehicle while the 5 kids and their library books are still in it. They sat in the car and read their books while Megan and I tried to vacuum around them. Well, we tried.
And if that weren’t enough, we decided to stop at Target. Because we just haven’t had enough together time. And I kind of needed straws (which I couldn’t find), shoes for Megan, and birthday presents for both John’s friend and Megan’s friend. Now, when a mom pulls into a Target on a hot summer day and she and five of her kids pile out of the car, it’s like she’s wearing a sign on her back that says, “Go ahead–Shoot me now and put me out of my misery”. Because at least then the torture would be done. Instead I dragged them around the store making them try on shoes (oh, the torture!), while NOT buying John every single pair of shoes he wanted, and also none for you, Natalie, you little shoe hog.
After the shoes, I should have just left the store with my passel of whiners. But no, I’m stupid that way, so we proceeded to…. are you ready for this?….the toys. Yep. What was I thinking? You NEVER go through the toy department with children! NEVER!! You let them think that all toys come from the North Pole and they will only receive toys at Christmas time or their birthdays! But we’ve got these birthday parties coming up, and I must have been temporarily out of my mind from the large amounts of beef and crispy onion thingies I consumed earlier, and I trudged forward.
I won’t go into all the details, but we’ll just all agree that it wasn’t
a-pretty
b-productive
c-short enough
And whatever the heck we picked up for those birthdays will just have to do (silly string and poppers and a “It’s my birthday” badge for a 12 year old girl? Come on.)
Then we came home and I took a small nap.
I hate, hate, hate going shopping of any kind with any number of children. The last time I took the kids with me on my errands, I only stopped half the places on my route because I couldn’t stand having them with me. So much for saving on gas.
You obviously have much more stamina than I ever had to do all that with all the kids. Either that or you’re nuts! You’re going to enjoy it when they get married and leave, and then you can do all your shopping alone!