Spent Too Much

Hello everyone, this is Morry. Rachel read a statistic today that said that when people bring their kids shopping, they spend 40% more. Well that seemed to be very true for us today. We went shopping for Hanukkah for the boys and had some other errands to run and we spent way too much. We will be accepting donations for anyone that wants to help.

So the day today began late. Both boys pretty much slept until 10am. I was awakened at 8:15 by one of our lovely neighborhood outside dogs. We talked to our next door neighbors about the dog in the video that Rachel posted, and to their credit they seemed to have really reduced if not eliminated the barking. I'm not sure how but it seems to be quiet. However, the dog behind us, the one who used to spend time in our backyard has decided to try to make up for the lack of barking. Everyone who reads the blog knows my feeling on keeping dogs outside, so I'll spare everyone another rant.

We needed to run to go furniture shopping today because my mom, very generously, got us a flat screen LCD TV for Hanukkah. Now we need a TV stand or entertainment center to put the TV on (yes, I did end the sentence with a preposition). On our way to Lack's (a furniture store), we stopped at Kohl's to see about getting Noah some toys. Evan had a great time looking at the toys. He stopped to look at every single GeoTrax thing they had. He'd bring the box to me and say "Look Daddy, look at this GeoTrax. I want it. I want to bring it to my home." We did end up getting a couple good gifts for Noah.

Next we went to PetCo to get food for Lizzy. While we were there, I picked up litter for Mottel and a Hanukkah present for Lizzy. Every year we get her a rawhide bone in the shape of a candy cane. It's so big I can actually use it as a cane to leave the store.

Finally, we made it to Lack's. We had seen an entertainment center that we liked and I had called about it previously. In person, it looked to be exactly what we needed. So we ended up buying it.

We came home, had lunch and put the boys down for a nap.

After the naps, we went to a new burger joint for dinner called Willy O's. They have shakes there so after dinner we got shakes. Rachel poured some of her shake into a little cup for Evan. He used a spoon and ate it all himself. Rachel poured more in there and he ate that, but he also spooned some out and fed Noah. It was really funny to see Evan feeding Noah. I think Evan really enjoys taking care of Noah.

To top off our day of spending, we went to HEB. We hadn't had a real shopping trip since returning from our vacation, so we had to buy a lot of food. Rachel cuts coupons and the trip is always made longer by her organizing the coupons for what we purchased. Sometimes she has multiple coupons for the same item, so she tries to figure out which one is the better deal. It adds about 10 minutes to any shopping trip. However, to her credit, she did save us over $25 in coupons. I guess that's worth the extra 10 minutes.

Finally, Rachel wanted me to relate this one store. The night the boys and I went to McDonald's, on the way home, Evan asked for music. I had my iPod in the car so I turned it on and Nine Inch Nails was playing. It was their most recent album. Anyway, Nine Inch Nails, for those of you that don't know is Industrial, hard, electronic music. Evan paused after it started and said "This is fast. This is fast. Put on another kind of music." So I laughed and put on another song for him that he'd like better. He then said "That was fast. I didn't like that music." So Evan does not like my Nine Inch Nails. Last night when Rachel asked him about it, he said that it was too loud and said it "sounded like this" and started hitting his legs with his hands. I guess he likes more mellow music.

Until next time...