Payback
Our tax refund arrived today and to celebrate, I went shopping!
I bet a lot of people do that. The retailers seem to depend on it for their 1st quarter sales. The tax refund isn't an excuse to spoil myself though (I don't enjoy shopping much), but there have been several needed things in our family that we were putting off until the refund came in.
Top of the list today?
Shoes.
Do you know how hard it is to keep a clan of five growing kids decently dressed? Keeping them clothed hasn't been too much of a problem-- we accept all the hand-me-downs anyone will share with us, and Grandma will often spring for the rest of what they need. But shoes!! Those are harder. Kids usually trash shoes, so only rarely do hand-me-downs ever work in this category. (Usually only for dress shoes since those were often barely worn in the first place.)
In our family each child requires a bare minimum of two pairs of shoes-- athletic shoes and church shoes. Generally they also end up owning at least one pair of sandals or flip flops. (People live in those around here for much of the year-- comes with the eternal desert summers, I guess.) And of course they either grow out of or lose their shoes about every month or so. OK, maybe they go a little longer (sometimes). Anyway, everyone but J was in desperate need of one kind of shoes or the other. So today I loaded up the whole gang and we went to Payless, hoping to luck out and find some reasonably priced shoes that would work.
I had one of those rare moments of seeing myself through someone else's eyes this afternoon when we tromped through the door of the shoe store. There were two employees at the register and I clearly caught the looks of wariness. Hey, one young woman did welcome me to the store and ask if they could help me with anything. But when I told her yes, that I would like her to measure my kids' feet, her face fell even farther. You could actually see her mentally counting the kids and sighing!
If we didn't look like an invading horde at the beginning, we did by the end. While I found a pair of shoes for S, K ran up and down the aisles. When I finished with S and grabbed K to try on some shoes, S decided to play a game of "grab random shoes from the shelves and run!" J was wandering the aisles, lost in his own world. M and B couldn't help me since both were busy trying to find shoes of their own. Fortunately, K liked the very first pair of shoes we tried. Then B demanded my help so I asked J to help me out with S. I figured I could quickly help B find some tennis shoes, M would be done by the time we were, and we could get out of this whole experience in only 15 minutes.
If only I had known that I was only halfway done with the trip!
B didn't like any of the shoes. We tried pair after pair. In the meanwhile, I looked down the aisle to check on J and S, and J was hanging her upside down, threatening to smack her head on the floor. (Okaaaay, maybe J is NOT the best choice to keep an eye on the toddler.) When I finally finished with B, I found that M was not having any luck either. She has yet to figure out that most women's dress shoes are designed with torture of the human foot as an end goal (all in the name of fashion). So she was sure all these shoes didn't fit because they were the wrong size-- only to try new sizes and have them way too big or too small. It was the perfect opportunity for me to practice my patience (no comment on how well I did).
Mom, feel free to revel in my distress. I was horribly picky with shoes as a child and she must have wanted to tear her hair out. Maybe she even hoped that someday I would have a child who would make shoe shopping for me as hard as it was for her. If she did, her wish was granted! Shoe shopping with my kids is an extreme sport!
I bet a lot of people do that. The retailers seem to depend on it for their 1st quarter sales. The tax refund isn't an excuse to spoil myself though (I don't enjoy shopping much), but there have been several needed things in our family that we were putting off until the refund came in.
Top of the list today?
Shoes.
Do you know how hard it is to keep a clan of five growing kids decently dressed? Keeping them clothed hasn't been too much of a problem-- we accept all the hand-me-downs anyone will share with us, and Grandma will often spring for the rest of what they need. But shoes!! Those are harder. Kids usually trash shoes, so only rarely do hand-me-downs ever work in this category. (Usually only for dress shoes since those were often barely worn in the first place.)
In our family each child requires a bare minimum of two pairs of shoes-- athletic shoes and church shoes. Generally they also end up owning at least one pair of sandals or flip flops. (People live in those around here for much of the year-- comes with the eternal desert summers, I guess.) And of course they either grow out of or lose their shoes about every month or so. OK, maybe they go a little longer (sometimes). Anyway, everyone but J was in desperate need of one kind of shoes or the other. So today I loaded up the whole gang and we went to Payless, hoping to luck out and find some reasonably priced shoes that would work.
I had one of those rare moments of seeing myself through someone else's eyes this afternoon when we tromped through the door of the shoe store. There were two employees at the register and I clearly caught the looks of wariness. Hey, one young woman did welcome me to the store and ask if they could help me with anything. But when I told her yes, that I would like her to measure my kids' feet, her face fell even farther. You could actually see her mentally counting the kids and sighing!
If we didn't look like an invading horde at the beginning, we did by the end. While I found a pair of shoes for S, K ran up and down the aisles. When I finished with S and grabbed K to try on some shoes, S decided to play a game of "grab random shoes from the shelves and run!" J was wandering the aisles, lost in his own world. M and B couldn't help me since both were busy trying to find shoes of their own. Fortunately, K liked the very first pair of shoes we tried. Then B demanded my help so I asked J to help me out with S. I figured I could quickly help B find some tennis shoes, M would be done by the time we were, and we could get out of this whole experience in only 15 minutes.
If only I had known that I was only halfway done with the trip!
B didn't like any of the shoes. We tried pair after pair. In the meanwhile, I looked down the aisle to check on J and S, and J was hanging her upside down, threatening to smack her head on the floor. (Okaaaay, maybe J is NOT the best choice to keep an eye on the toddler.) When I finally finished with B, I found that M was not having any luck either. She has yet to figure out that most women's dress shoes are designed with torture of the human foot as an end goal (all in the name of fashion). So she was sure all these shoes didn't fit because they were the wrong size-- only to try new sizes and have them way too big or too small. It was the perfect opportunity for me to practice my patience (no comment on how well I did).
Mom, feel free to revel in my distress. I was horribly picky with shoes as a child and she must have wanted to tear her hair out. Maybe she even hoped that someday I would have a child who would make shoe shopping for me as hard as it was for her. If she did, her wish was granted! Shoe shopping with my kids is an extreme sport!
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