"Monday" Update!

Yes, it's Tuesday, but I'm still counting this as one of my "Monday Updates" because it's my blog and I do what I want, bwhahaha!

This weekend was filled with shopping adventures. Some fun, some horrible, some exhausting. I went to the mall three times on Saturday. We live between 20 and 30 minutes from the mall depending on traffic. Thus, this many trips to the mall are quite ridiculous, but were very necessary.

Trip one: The morning trip with Caroline

Caroline is usually a wonderful shopping buddy. The previous afternoon we had shopped at Stein Mart and a local store called Narcissus and she had been an absolute delight. Therefore, I saw no harm in taking her dress shopping at the mall while Joshua helped move his archery range. 

Well. It didn't go so pretty. We walk into the mall and I start grabbing dresses to try on. She starts crying, so I grab her out of the stroller and hold her while I grab more dresses. Then I catch a whiff of something stinky, ask the girl to please keep my dresses in the changing room, and go change the diaper. Awesome. Done, fixed, awesome. So, we go back to the changing rooms, I put my dress on the floor for her to sit on, and she squeals in delight for about five minutes as she watches herself in the mirror. As I'm standing there in bra and panties about to try on another dress, the squeals turn into screams. I make a bottle for her right there in the dressing room. It was a disaster. I finally had to let her cry for a minute so I could put my dress back on and move to a bench to feed her.

This should have calmed her down. We moved to the upstairs section of Dillards to shop around more. The entire time she had to either be held or needed to have the bottle in her mouth. I did all this while choosing more dresses to try on. We also lost her toy giraffe at one point which was a disaster, but luckily the sales clerk found it. We were a hot mess express. After Dillards we walked around the mall a little more, but the fussiness never went away so we headed home (of course, she fell asleep the second the car started).

Trip two: Just me, myself, and I

Joshua finished his archery stuff, so he watched Caroline while I headed to the mall on my own. He had no idea what he got himself into, as she was fussy for him, as well, but eventually fell asleep. I had a lot more luck looking at dresses on my own. I eventually settled for a dress from Macy's. It's teal, long, flowy, one shoulder with a studded jewel, and very comfortable. It cost me $100, but it's an investment. I now have a go-to black tie gown. Success!

Trip three: The whole family!

When I got home from my successful trip, I realized I could have donated $3 to charity to receive 25% off my purchase. It would have been nice for the girl to mention that after my first coupon attempt was unsuccessful. Anywho, we decided to head back to the mall to try to get that coupon, and to look at suits for Joshua. 

Joshua ended up getting a basic black suit from Penny's (he'll dress it up with a bowtie and tuxedo shirt). Caroline once again needed to be held most of the time, but was at least happy. Once we got his suit, I think we were all too tired to make the trek back to Macy's, so we headed home without trying to get the Macy's coupon, defeating the entire purchase of the trip. Epic fail, Brian family, epic fail.

Sunday, we went to DSW to find shoes that went with my dress. Josh ended up staying in the car to feed Caroline (until she went poopy and he had to come inside to change her diaper). I ended up finding a simple pair of silver Nine West shoes that will work great. It was a successful trip!

I have not been posting my food blogs due to the lousy food we ate last week. In an effort to be frugal, we ate grilled cheese and tomato soup three nights in a row. I figured that wasn't worthy of a blog entry. I did make some delicious pork chops last night, but the recipe had already been blogged, so it was also not worthy of a food blog. Oh well.

In Caroline food news: She hates peas (see exhibit A on the left) and LOVES LOVES LOVES peaches (see exhibit B on the right).

EXHIBIT A ........ EXHIBIT B