Good Shopping Gone Bad

I think it's official that I'm now a true "Iowegian".  Before I moved here, I often heard stories from my friend about her cousin (who lived in Iowa) and young children who stayed up all hours of the night - no bedtime.  As I got to know several other people after moving, it seemed that was a common theme.  Children in Iowa never go to bed!  Or at least, they don't go to bed at a decent time. Unlike our kids, many of their friends stay up well into the night watching TV, playing video games or whatever they want.  Not at our house!  

We went school shopping last night after dinner.  It all started out grand, but turned ugly pretty quick - picking out something as simple as a FOLDER became a critical decision worth agonizing over.   It was the shopping trip that wouldn't end!  And as I left WAL-MART at 10:25 pm last night toting both older kids, I shook my head sadly to myself... what have I become?! 

If nothing else, I've learned to never take the kids with me to buy anything but the supplies. No shoes.  No clothes.  OMG.  Buying a simple pair of shoes for school was impossible.  Charlie will wear whatever I come home with, but WILL has his own 'style' which includes a lot of black and a lot of skulls.  YUCK.  I usually try to buy cute stuff that may have a little skull snuck on, but with him in tow - he wanted skulls full force.

I can't even believe some of the crap I came home with.  I think I was just so tired of shopping that I started viewing the most hideous stuff in the store as 'not THAT bad'.  I had every intention of stopping by Old Navy for some T's after the shoe shopping, but the shoe shopping took so dang long there wasn't time.  They didn't have the size of Converse Will wanted, so after all the effort, we left the shoe store empty handed.  We then went to Target, again intending to grab some T's after the supplies.  Target was out of erasers, folders and something else - and didn't have any acceptable shoes either, so we headed to the dreaded Wal-Mart.  By this point I gave up on the shoes and T's and planned on just grabbing erasers and the other odds and ends. However, on the trek across the store between folders and Kleenex, we passed the boys clothing section. Will spied a 'cool' shirt (which was a black shirt with multicolored skulls, headphones and electric guitars) right away, and both boys immediately buried themselves in that section.  At first I was firm.  I told them the shirts were ugly - even repulsive, but they didn't care.  They claimed 'girls' didn't know what was cool.  

When I got home and displayed our purchases for Ben, I had to laugh at myself.  I am still in awe that I came out of the store with this gem:

As if this shirt didn't have enough going on with cards, skulls, flames, a car brand (Chevrolet? The only Chevy we have around here is Ben's commuter Geo), but if you look very close at the bottom of the shirt.... it even says 'NASCAR'.  Now that's a perfect shirt!

Good Lord.