Weekend in Review

The kiddos and I had a pretty good weekend. It started with Lily's birthday party on Friday. It was a little stressful trying to get everyone there after working in DC all day, but we made it. Lily is definitely among the kids' favorite friends, Jack especially was super-excited to celebrate her birthday. We had a blast at the sprayground. Jack enjoyed chasing Lily around, Kara loved the water. Anna enjoyed drinking lemonade from a can and arguing with the other children that it was indeed properly referred to as soda, "well, it's in a soda can, so I can call it soda." Jack also took it upon himself to try and keep one of the smaller children away from the street (despite the fact that she wasn't really anywhere near the street). It was actually very sweet, well to me, not so much to poor Frankie.

Saturday, we got went to the mall. Children's Place was having a jeans sale ($10). And, with the purchase of $50, you could save an additional 25%, bringing the price to $7.50! Until this point, I have always been at least one season ahead on clothes. That way I get everything on sale or clearance and there is no last minute scrambling when the weather turns. I was looking in their closets for the storage bins with the next size up when I realized Jack had next to nothing in his. Fortunately, this coincided with the e-mail notice of the jean sale.

Some might say I am crazy to venture to the mall with 3 small children (none of whom will willingly sit in a stroller) on the Saturday before back-to-school. To those I say--you are right! What was I thinking?!?!? Oh, that I love a bargain. So, I promised them the play area if they would let me look in one store. The kids are funny, they don't consider the stores in the mall to actually be part of the mall. Whenever we venture into a store they start begging to go back to the mall. Anyway, they were not good. They weren't bad either, they were just typical 2 and 3 year olds. I could only find 3 pairs of pants I liked, so I bought those and we went to the play area. My total was $31. While at the play area I was able to actually think and I realized that if I had picked out two more pairs of jeans, I would have gotten the 25% off and brought my total up only $7.00. Clearly I had made a mistake. So after they were done playing, I took them back to the store. I told the lady I wanted to return the items I bought and then repurchase them with some additional items. I will spare you the chaos that this caused as the line behind me grew. But, we got our pants. And, I let the kids each pick out something from the 0.99 bin. In the picture, Jack is wearing one of his new pairs of pants with the keychain he chose (Thomas always complains that I take terrible pictures, this one is also a slightly blurry example of that). Anna chose a necklace and Kara chose a giant ring. The ring looks like a ring pop, so she kept putting it in her mouth and trying to eat it. I think she believes she got a raw deal.

After the mall we went to Sam's Club. It was almost noon. I figured the samples would fill them up until we got home and could have lunch. When we got there I noticed that for once the food line was really short. So, I decided to just buy them lunch. Anna, Kara and I had pizza, Jack had a hotdog. We split two very large drinks. The total? $6.22. It was definitely a bargain day. Of course, immediately after we sat down, someone insisted they had to go to the bathroom. So, off we went, leaving our food on the table. A stranger was kind of enough to agree to make sure no one threw it out.

Wow, I thought I had nothing much to write about. I am going to have to speed this up. Sunday was church. I had bought the kids little magnet scene boards and pulled those out as a special surprise (the Ainas lent Jack one a couple of Sundays ago and it caused quite the ruckus because they all wanted to play with it). It worked like a charm for Anna and Kara. In fact, at one point Jack had to go to the bathroom and the girls actually wanted to stay in the meeting! I enjoyed Sunday school, and in Young Women's there was a great lesson on honesty. It made me remember the time I stole something as a child and the overwhelming guilt I felt. It also made me thankful, yet again, for a wonderful mother who always seemed to handle things in just the right way. I am glad I learned at an early age that crime doesn't pay.

Speaking of motherhood, we are reading Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother for book club this month (I'm hosting). I read it when it first came out and really enjoyed it. I found it thought-provoking and it made me question some of my own "lenient Western" style parenting ideas. Not that I would ever swing completely in Ms. Chua's direction (or ever close). But, I will be curious to hear what others think.

Oh, and as an update, the Super Nanny technique worked--Kara is staying in her room! Now, I need to find out if there is a method for keeping them in their beds and somewhat quiet at night.