Is It Already Here?

What?  Summer's over?

School starts today?

I can't believe it.  August 7th just seems too early to start this whole routine thing again.

At least all of the kids' shopping is done. For a quick explanation of our back-to-school shopping tradition, read here and here.

It was hard to find five separate days this year to take kids shopping alone, but we got it all done.

 Ben--his favorite shopping spot is Last Chance, Nordstrom's "return and reject" outlet store.  He loves shopping there because they have great shoes at fantastic prices (we happened to hit their 30% off all men's shoes sale this year), and since he wears a uniform to school, shoes are his only opportunity for a little self-expression. He got four new pairs of shoes for $60, and Mom was happy. New football cleats and compression shorts, a few new pairs of khakis, and he was ready to go.  His lunch of choice:  Smash burger.  If you haven't tried it yet, make time.  It is one of the best burgers I've ever had, and their fries?  Perfection.

 Lily (and Eve)--Lily's shopping day was scheduled for later in the summer, but she just got too excited, so she volunteered to share her day with her little sister.  It sounded fun before we left, but Evie was GRUMPY that day.  We stopped for lunch at Yoko's, a local Japanese fast food restaurant, and within five minutes Eve has spilled her soda, spilled her lunch, spilled Lily's soda, and thrown three tantrums.  Lily and I were reconsidering our plans to share the day at that point.

Then, we went to a shoe store, and Evie's personality suddenly changed.

The girl loves shoes.  She tried on every shoe in her size as Lily shopped.  Now this was more like what we had hoped would happen.

 Lily tried to convince me that she was old enough to wear these shoes.  I sent pictures to Heidi, Tucker, and her dad, and all three of them backed up my verdict--cute shoes, not old enough for them yet.

 Lucky for me, these shoes were just a joke.  Who wears these????

 The mall was very good to Lily that day--DownEast Basics was having a huge sale, and so was Styles.  The girl brought home some cute stuff.

 Plus, we needed ice cream, right?

And the accessories department at Target kept us amused for quite a while! It was a fun adventure with my girls.  In the end, I was glad Evie came, and I think Lily was, too.

 Micah--Micah's time may have been the shortest, but he needed the fewest new things, and so we combined his shopping day with a trip to Costco.  He was so fun to be with, so much energy.  He kept trying his hat on every mannequin, cracking jokes, and trying to decide on a pair of shoes.  His feet are quite narrow, and that makes it hard to find shoes that fit him well.

He really wanted to eat a pretzel for lunch, but when he saw this pretzel-wrapped hot dog, he knew he'd found something better than just a plain pretzel!

"It looks all warty and stuff.  But it is delicious!  Are you gonna blog that I said it was warty? Well, make sure you include that I said it was delicious!"

We had a funny experience.  At JCPenney, Micah tried to convince me to buy some socks, but I explained to him that I didn't want to buy a package with every sole a different color because that makes them hard to match in the laundry (always thinking, that Mom! Who thought it was a good idea to package six pairs of socks together all with different colored bottoms?  Definitely not a mom, and definitely not someone who does the laundry).  We bought all of our stuff and then headed to Target to buy all-matching white socks.

At Target, Micah asked me if I'd bought the other socks.  I told him no, but he said he knows we bought them because they were in the bag--he'd felt them in there.  Micah likes to joke with me while shopping by secretly placing stuff in the cart, hoping I'll buy it.  While at JCPenney, he had hidden those colorful socks in his shoe bag from another store, not thinking to tell me or show me.  WE HAD WALKED OUT OF THE STORE WITH THOSE HIDDEN SOCKS!  When he realized what had happened, he was upset, thinking he would be in trouble for stealing. After purchasing the white socks, we hurried back to JCP, where I walked in the door, explained what had happened, left the socks, and cleverly avoided a prison sentence for my nine-year-old son.  A win/win, I would say.

Hyrum--My little guy.  All he wanted to do was eat lunch at McDonald's and buy new shoes and "soft" socks.  Unfortunately for him, I accidentally locked the only key to the Suburban inside it, and waiting for a locksmith made a significant dent in the amount of time we had together, not to mention the $220 hit a locksmith took out of my checking account--who knew a locksmith cost that much???

After a much delayed start, we headed out.  Hyrum has the widest feet of all my kids, and he tried on pair after pair that pinched or hurt in some way.  It took a while, but a stop at the Vans store solved the problem.  Since his current shoes looked like this . . .

 . . . I broke my firm and fast rule of not wearing the new shoes home, and I let him strut his stuff through the mall. 

 Too many stops and too much shopping, he fell asleep on the way home.  Poor little guy.  But it didn't take much to wake him up and unpack his booty to show his sisters.

First grade.  He won't be my little guy much longer.  I won't be able to handle it when he can't fit in my lap or won't hold my hand any more.

I'm not even going to think about it.