A Shopping Weekend

A Shopping Weekend

By Allan Olson

It was a last-minute plan, my idea. That in itself was something of a rarity, seeing as how I don’t usually think much of last-minute plans. However, it was my idea, and so I had to live with the consequences, since I opened my mouth and suggested it.

Last weekend – all three days of it – to some degree, was spent shopping in a large city to the east of Cass Lake. Not only did we go shopping, we went shopping with four children in tow, on at least three different excursions during the weekend.

We arrived at our destination late on Friday, but still in plenty of time to get some shopping done – at least we thought it was so.

Our first stop was to purchase a new friend – yes, we actually bought a friend – his name is Mr. Lee Garmin, but our adventures with Mr. Garmin will be saved for another column.

Since we were at the mall, we were hoping (naively, perhaps) that we could get the majority of the kids’ shopping done (What were we thinking?) that evening and hopefully some of ours as well.

We came to find out that there was a flaw in our plan.

The last time we really went shopping for our four continually-growing children was two years ago. The kids were younger then (obviously) and, for the most part, easier to shop for.

Another flaw in our last-minute plan was that we thought we could do this without the aid of our usual helpers – one of three nieces who are good not only at shopping but also experts in managing young children in many ways, including distracting them.

On this trip we had no assistants. “No big deal; we are the parents, and we can handle this on our own.” I don’t think we had been there an hour when my wife and I looked at each other with a “What were we thinking?” exasperated look.

The problem was, we were thinking of previous times where clothes that fit our children were much easier to find. We didn’t account for the fact that to find a pair of jeans (at a reasonable price; i.e. cheap) for Nikolai and Abigail was going to be such a large challenge.

My wife ventured into a store for her with Abigail in tow, and suggested I take the others to the Dollar Store for something to keep them occupied.

Of course, they all wanted a toy. Since I was tired of broken cheap toys in my house, I vetoed that. Instead, we found notebooks (I know, boring), colored pencils and a new UNO deck (possibly my only moment of brilliance all weekend).

Soon I was sitting on the floor of the mall with three kids playing UNO. I had just got the cards shuffled when Alivia and Abigail decided to switch places.

“Hold my cards,” Alivia said. “Um, okay,” I said, and I did just that, placing them beside me on the floor.

I proceeded to deal the cards (yes, I got some funny looks), and we proceeded to play UNO.

Since I didn’t know how this would go, I only dealt five cards at first. I got my butt kicked – quickly.

Somehow, Marcus got all the good cards and between being skipped, reversed on and forced to draw four, I lost and Marcus won.

Since that game lasted all of five minutes (maximum), I dealt out the full seven cards (I think that’s what’s usually dealt; I didn’t read the rules).

I got my butt kicked again – quickly. It pretty much went down like before, and didn’t last much longer. I got beat up on, and Marcus won again.

By this time had we received a few quirky comments and looks (none in poor taste or disdain) from passersby, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t in a store, and the kids were enjoying it.

We hit a couple more stores, but quit early due to starving children and a kind aunt who offered to take us out to dinner.

Very little progress was made toward our goal.

We retired for the evening at my cousin’s house (who kindly let us crash there, saving us the expensive hotel accommodations of years past).

The evening was much more relaxing as the four of us played games and enjoyed the evening, just like old times (pre-children our four and their two).

The kids had fun, too.

The only problem of staying there was the brilliant idea my cousin had for me. We played the Kinect, and the boxing and a jumping, crouching game hurt far worse the next morning than I imagined they would. As a matter of fact, it’s two evenings later and my legs are still twinging from being used in ways there weren’t used to.

The shopping continued on Saturday, along with a field trip for the children to a train museum.

Late Sunday afternoon, after a day of shopping by my wife and me (our kind hosts agreed to entertain the kids), we ventured home – finally.

Stay tuned for more highlights of that weekend, as well as our adventures with Mr. Lee Garmin.

P.S. It’s our one-year anniversary of home ownership this week, thanks to our family, and to our friends at Western Bank and Grimes Realty. We have experienced both the joys and some of the frustrations of home ownership.

Thanks for reading, and have a great week. Remember – take a kid fishing, and watch out for school buses on the road. For more of my columns visit: http://allan-crazykids.blogspot.com.