Beating the Back-to-School Rush

In late July, I realized that the new school year was rapidly approaching and the kids were definitely in need of some better fitting shoes and clothes. I love that the flexibility of my job allows me to stay at home with the kids in the summer, and we were able to beat the back-to-school rush in the stores by picking a random day to get our shopping and errands finished a little early.

We started the shopping trip off at Gap Kids and we were happily surprised to find a huge clearance section of clothes that would work for Connor. We ended up spending $54 for about 15 items of clothes!!

Kaitlynn stayed busy with her doll, Lea, outside the dressing room while Connor tried on clothes.

For our next stop, we arrived at Academy to find the kids some much-needed new shoes. It never ceases to amaze me how much the kids' feet grow in between these shopping trips. I try to buy them shoes twice per year, and each time, their feet have grown at least a full size since the last time.

They found the perfect shoes!

On the way out of the shoe department, we couldn't help but notice the new J.J. Watt mannequin. The kids thought he was awesome and had a little fun with him.

Connor gives his best J.J. Watt impression.

Then Kaitlynn had to join in.

Kaitlynn actually discovered that even J.J. the mannequin has some serious abs, ha!

By the time we were finished at Academy, it was near 1:00 p.m. and the kids and I were starving! We had shopped so long that we were all HANGRY! We found the nearest spot to eat -- Schlotsky's -- and nearly inhaled our lunch. To this day, we all talk about how the food that day tasted better than it had ever tasted before!

When we finally made it back home, we decided to make some brownies in celebration of a successful back-to-school shopping day with lots of sales and no crowds! The kids love making brownies because they get to lick the bowl of brownie batter!

Licking the bowl is their favorite part!

I couldn't help but throw these last couple of pics in here. Throughout the summer, I often have to drag the kids with me on my various errands during the week. Even though they are usually smiling in pictures, I admit that often my kids are NOT happy to be running errands and going from store to store with me. Many outings involve lots of whining and arguing, which gets old FAST.

On one of our shopping days last summer, I got fed up with the kids' disrespectful behavior so I came up with a punishment that might be my best parenting idea yet. I told them that every time they acted poorly, they were adding another store/stop to the list of errands for that day. As soon as they could act RIGHT, we could go home.

The first "punishment" was an extra trip to TJ Maxx. Connor and Kaitlynn were so determined to prevent a trip to another store that they quickly buddied up and acted like perfect angels while I was shopping. Ha!

This is how I found the kids while I was shopping at TJ Maxx.

They'll do anything to get out of more shopping!