Weekend Update - Steinmart or Bust!

We have had a great weekend here in FamilyOf5Land! Yesterday we all got up early (not MomOf3's ideal way to start the weekend) and had an early start to the day. After breakfast, DadOf3 headed out to get his hair cut. He has to travel next week and he always feels better after a haircut. His traveling next week was also a catalyst for our next adventure: shopping with three kids. DadOf3 needed some new, nicer, summery shirts, so we headed over to ye olde Steinmart for some fun family shopping. If the Prince and the Princess had just told me that they preferred to not shop yesterday, life would have been a little easier. Instead, once we arrived in the store, they declared matter-of-factly that they didn't want to shop and wanted to run around the entire store instead! Now, I like Steinmart. I have found some good buys at Steinmart. DadOf3 likes Steinmart. My one beef with Steinmart is that they have no carts. Carts are critical when you are dealing with a 5 year old and a three year old who do not want to shop and a 2 year old who likes to copy his big brother and big sister! Being the nice wife that I am, once we arrived at the store, I told DadOf3 to go shopping and I would take the kids over to the ladies clothes and look around. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was a very BAD idea! The path from the store's men's section to the store's women's section took us directly through the store's gift section. This is a very scary place to be with three kids!! There were glass figuringes, glass photo frames, and collectible old-fashioned-looking cars and trucks. Once the Prince saw the cars and trucks, any hope of shopping with them alone had flowen out the window. As a stay at home parent, I must admit that one thing that I really, truly miss is shopping - alone. Currently, if I need new clothes, I order online and hope for the best. This was a chance for MomOf3 to actually TRY ON clothes before purchasing them. The Prince kept coming over to me when I called him and then running right back to the cars and trucks (and out of my line of vision) laughing his very best naughty-little-boy laugh. Grrrr! I turned into mean mommy at that point and threatened to take them out to to van if they didn't shape up. Instead, I just ended up leading them around and around the store in a fruitless attempt to run off some of their energy. DadOf3 came out of the dressing room after what seemed like hours, finding much success in his shirt selection. He was pretty happy with his finds and then offered to watch the kiddos while I went shopping. I jumped at the opportunity but I ended up taking the Princess with me. DadOf3 is an awesome daddy but dealing with the three of them in that situation would have sent him through the roof. The Princess and I went shopping and found some solid colored t-shirts for me! Yippee! T-shirts and shorts are all I need to get me through the extreme heat down here in the southern US. It was a successful if stressful venture!