Grocery Shopping With Four Boys

I survived.

Barely.

Monday was the only day that really worked best for us to grocery shop.  I have been planning on going since we are in charge of making all the pancakes for the Sunrise Breakfast at our church (THAT will be a blog post!) on Easter.

That doesn't mean I wanted to go.

I despise grocery shopping. Some people love it and rave over their deals.  My plan of attack is to get in, get what we need, get out.

It rarely goes that way.

We loaded up the suburban and headed into the cement city.  Imagine my surprise when I looked in my rear view mirror to see this....

 He made it unable to forget I had four boys in tow.

I had S1 snap the picture.

When we arrived at Sam's Club, I had all the boys stop and pray with me.  Am I the only mom who does this?  I pray we make right choices, that we find what we need, that we stay safe and then I repeat that we need help making wise choices.  It's so hard to get just what you NEED when you are out of everything.

The boys did awesome.

We filled two carts, loaded the suburban and filled the cooler we had brought with us.  Then we tootled on over to the Goodwill store.

Sometimes you go to Goodwill and find NOTHING.  Sometimes you go and find amazing things.  Today we found amazing things.

I looked at S1 and said, "Whatever you find I will get you.  You need clothes.  Now, go look in the men's section and see what you can find."

I then went and hid in the little kids section so he would not see how sad I was that he had to shop in men's.  The poor boy has nearly outgrown everything and there isn't a soul who can help us with hand me downs for the boy - er, young man -.  He found shorts, dress shirts, a suit - yes, a SUIT - and pants. He was beaming.

S2 scored on a pile of shorts that we actually had to limit.  S3 got a pair of beach shoes.  S4 got himself a summer's worth of shorts.

I found skirts (no dresses, hahaha!), workout pants (in case I ever plan to work out) and jeans.

We also found brand new water boots for my niece and an adorable purse for her...which was some debate because mama wanted the fancy spancy one for R but the boys were adamant we get the nice, filled with pockets not super fancy one.

Boys.

Checking out took us FOREVER.  But after spending nearly an hour there, we needed these clothes.  But checking out proved - tough.  They couldn't figure out how to check us out and it took a good 15 minutes or more before we could walk out of there. As frustrating as that was, the boys were still great.

We had to stop at another store for detergent and a few other things and melt down began.

It was proving to be a long day for them.

While they were doing okay, they were reaching the breaking point and I was worried about them enough to forget to pick up the blonde roast coffee from Starbucks I have been waiting so long to try and had planned to celebrate (or use for coping through) spring break.

We arrived home (finally, with S2 and S4 zonking out for the back roads trip) and they helped me unload groceries.

 They were ever so helpful, were they not?

I got busy taking care of groceries and the boys started digging through our goodwill bag.

I think I received no less than ten hugs thanking me for the clothes I bought.  Unbeknownst to me, S2 has been teased at school about his shorts being too short and he didn't want me to feel bad that he didn't have any more so he hadn't said anything.

S1 is beaming to have a few things that actually fit him.  The fact that he has a suit makes him feel all grown up.

S3 wants to wear his beach shoes to bed.

S4 thinks his shorts are just great, just so great and not too fancy and just great.

So, really, it was a great day.

Exhausting, but great.

Not so exhausting that they were too tired to move the fridge to the front porch and put worms in it (trying not to think about that as I type) but great just the same.