Reason # 608,734 why I love my computer...

I temporarily took leave of my senses yesterday. I went against one of my strictest rules put in place by torturous experience. And the results? Not surprisingly: TORTUROUS.

I took all 4 of my beloved children shopping. I don't mean grocery, although that certainly qualifies under said rule, I mean "Mama's a mite discontented with her wardrobe and Julianna needs a new bathing suit shopping".

I have to go ahead and exonerate my sweet daughter here. Actually I'm going to give her some serious props for her innate skillz in this area. She picked out and tried on like a champ even under such excruciating conditions as having your three havoc-wreaking brothers there laughing uncontrollably because you put your denim capri's on inside out after leaving the fitting room. Could she help it that she was excited to have found a $45 dress for $7 and it fit perfectly?!

Excuse me while I wipe a tear because even as I type, she came walking out here in her jammies with her new sparkly pink flip-flops on her feet. Atta girl!!!

But back to the torturous part. I love my boys so much, but y'all, they are their Daddy's men. Right down to the baby, who, by the way turns FIVE today! We have a BANG-UP day planned and not a bit of it includes shopping. I will post on that tomorrow...

Gravy, I keep getting sidetracked. ANYWAY, they are their Daddy's men. They weren't 6 seconds into our little excursion before their eyes started to glaze over and the whining ensued. But it never stops there, because if it did, I would be soooo alright with that, you see, because I can tune my lovies out like nobodies business.

NO, it gradually escalates from touching e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g that can break, to riding on your not-so-coordinated big brother's back right into a small clearance kiosk (which turned out to be forgivable because that's how we found the aforementioned sparkly pink flip-flops on sale for $3....can I get an AMEN?)

The part that caused my blood pressure to finally reach stroke level was when I started to the checkout. In all honesty, that is always my least favorite part of any shopping trip as it is, but this time, because the boys were buck-wild, it made it all the worse. As I am trying to corral them all to within a few feet of me, (which is no small feat because they have this wretched tendency to scatter like....I don't know....but something that scatters.....) I hear this blood curdling screech from Andrew. You know the automatic sliding doors? Yeah, well, he somehow managed to get his chubby little arm stuck in between the sliding one and the stationary one. So I run over there, leaving the rest of my children amuk around the ceramics, to try to disengage my child from the contraption. But it wasn't budging.

And since we can never have just a small amount of chaos, about that time, the little unmoving doors must have sensed that it had a child caught in it's clutches because IT started screaming, too. Alarms were going off and every associate for miles, I swear, came running. Thankfully, after what felt like 16.5 hours, I was able to loosen Andrew's arm.

I then took my child, my purchases and my fractured dignity to the cashier where she looked me dead in the eye, right here in the middle of Summertime, and asked me: "Do you homeschool?"

THIS is why I shop online, thankyouverymuch. Now I am off to celebrate Squeezie Cookie's big 5 years. Adios and Happy Friday!