Economic Stimulus, anyone?

Well, it's been several months since I let us out of the house for some major shopping. Just as long since we've driven to the larger town 20 miles away with the Super Walmart, larger ShopKo, medium sized mall with Kohl's, JCPenneys, and Sears, and, who could ever forget, Target!

I think it's safe to say that we stimulated the economy today. Rainy day, kids can't play outside, I figure, heck, time to make that trek, get some new tennis shoes, because the kids' shoes were just awful, worn to nubbins on the bottom and splitting at the seams. Looked for jeans for WC#1. Do you know it is next to impossible to find size 10 jeans, which are long enough, but in slims with adjustable waists? Kids must be huge around these days because all I find are regulars and huskys. Fortunately, we went through WC#2's stash of summer clothes. Much seems to still fit, or at least she has a goodly amount in her drawer. But I still couldn't resist an $8 skirt with shorts underneath for her. And it will go with all manners of pink and purples in her drawer. Many of her sweatpants and stretchy pants from this winter are worn in the knees(!), and/or have lots of interesting stains from markers or dirty floors and grass. They will not be garage saled nor given away, they are nasty.

I got myself some decent looking capris from TJMaxx, both under $15 apiece. We got an electronic scale (you know I'm serious now, see here), and another cabinet for the bathroom, because the first one doesn't seem to hold enough stuff. Party supplies for a birthday coming up, presents for a party invite, laundry and dish detergent, a new umbrella, because mine broke. New rugs for the bathroom, because the other ones were falling apart. A new tablecloth that looks more spring-like, rather than our darker fall-like colors.

Busy, busy. Now, the biggest coup was finding a polo style shirt in a certain blue color for WC#1, for a picture I have in my head I want to get taken of the kiddos. It was not an easy task. The colors were wrong, or there were only stripey shirts, or the logo was too big or just plain weird. The last store, Kohl's, Mr. Wild gave us 10 minutes and we found one that we could all live with.

When WC#2 was 3 months old, she had an adorable little bright pink dress. Her big brother had a blue polo shirt (from the gap) with a teddy bear where the logo goes and tan shorts. We went to the Picture People and got a cute little triptych of them. One of him alone, one of her alone and both of them snuggling together. It is my intention to get something similar done this early summer and create a similar triptych again. If I wait another six years, I don't think they're going to want to wear those colors again, her at 12, him at 15, but I could give it a go. They may think I'm weird, but, maybe when Mr. Wild and I are older and they have kids of their own, maybe they'll carry the theme and get pictures for us for Christmas.

If you couldn't tell, we also have our tax refunds, which I think also prompted me to go a little crazy. Mr. Wild didn't want to hit Old Navy, because he loves that stuff. I said he could go ahead and get something. But then we started talking about a flat screen TV and whether we wanted to spend money on something like that. He then declared he'd rather have a flat screen than new clothes. He was talking about one of the shows that we watch and we can't see what's on part of the screen anymore, because we don't have the movie screen ratio on our old TVs. It's crazy, this planned obsolescence.

If you've checked your recent paychecks, there is money not going out to the federal government. My last two paychecks had $0 contributed to federal taxes. So we got out there and spent a little more and even dropped some money for some dinner. We didn't get the Starbucks fix we were hoping for this afternoon, but I truly got to shop until I nearly dropped. Dinner revived me, but not the rest of the family.

Ah, well, I thought it was a good day.