Yet another Evening Activity

So it just became harder for me to keep up my blog everyday. You see, I work in an IT shop. Therefore, the tools I use to do my job are on the verge of obsolescence. For example, my web browser. We JUST upgraded to IE 7. For those of you "in the know," there are currently 2 more recent versions out there, with IE 10 on the way. Long story short, my blog no longer supports the browser that I have at work. Also, I work in a majorly regulated environment. There are state and federal regulations surrounding pretty much everything I do. So, it's not like I can just download Chrome to my work computer and call it good. For now, I'm getting around this by emailing myself my blog text, in the hopes that I'll copy it over every night. Otherwise, I have a little journal right here in email. You see, I've pretty much quit journaling since I started blogging. Maybe this will be the wake up call I need to start hand-writing a journal, again.

Anyway, let me tell you about my weekend. It was interesting. Kind of.

Saturday, Scooter was scheduled to fly back to Omaha to spend a week with her dad. Since we're terrible procrastinators, we needed to run to the Adidas store to get her cousin's Christmas present before her flight. So...we got up, ate waffles and sausage, and headed out to the store while Ben went to jiujitsu. Although Bubba is perfectly capable of walking for hours on end, we opted to use a stroller - more for child restraint and mother sanity than anything else. We went into the store, picked out a present for Gunnar, a couple of pairs of shorts, a couple of shirts, and then headed over to the shoe department in order to shod my children's feet. On the way there, I ran into someone I know from work. We chatted a minute, then continued onto the shoes.

1st stop: Bubba's size. Think of a capital H. The front entry-way is the lower leg on the right. The men's is up that way, the women's is the whole top of the H, the kids' and some men's is the horizontal line, and the shoes is the lower left leg of the H. The children's shoes are the inside wall of the lower leg on the left. Bubba (of course) wanted the exact same shoes that he already has (just a little bigger). Mom was pushing for some shoes with velcro. It's about time he start learning to put on and take off his own shoes. I won out. The velcro shoes had yellow on them. Bubba will opt for yellow every time. I let him get out of his stroller to measure his foot and try on his shoes.

Last stop: Scooter's sized shoes. The very bottom of the left leg of the H. Between Bubba's size and Scooter's size along the wall is a door. It leads out to the entry-way on the bottom right leg of the H. It has one of those long door knobs that toddlers love. You know...the ones that turn a door-knob, but they actually have a handle. So if you're too short/have small hands, you can still kind of hang off of it to open it? Yeah. That one. The other thing that door had was a sign that read, "Warning: This door is alarmed. Only open door in case of emergency." Bubba is learning his letters, but he doesn't know how to read. Refusing to get back into his stroller, I was struggling with measuring Scooter's foot and picking out shoes, but so far, we were managing. Scooter was just trying on her first shoe, when I saw Bubba out of the corner of my eye heading for the door. I stopped him. I looked him in the eye and said, "No, Bubba. That is not our door. It will make a loud sound, and you will be in trouble if you touch that door. Do you understand?" I've been adding the "do you understand?" part to the end of a lot of what I tell Bubba lately. It worked like a charm when Scooter was that age. If she acknowledged that she understood what I was saying, she wouldn't do it. Bubba is still learning.

Scooter's shoe was slightly too small. I turned to look for the next size, when I heard the alarm. Panic and horror filled my body. I looked at the door, which was open. I wondered if Bubba had run through the door and whether I'd have to retrieve him. My eyes scanned around, and I found him inside the door, looking at me. When he caught my eye, he knew he was in trouble. He sat on the floor, and put his head down on his legs. I pulled the door shut, and the alarm stopped a second later. I was mortified!!! Bubba was pretty embarrassed as well. I told him that he'd have to get into his stroller for check out. He agreed. Nobody in the store even batted an eye. No sales person came over to make sure we weren't running out of the building with all of our merchandise, no parent gave us dirty looks for disrupting their otherwise peaceful shopping experience (actually, that place is always a madhouse...people might not have noticed).  Whew! We ran up to the check out line, caught the next open register, and got the heck out of there. I'd like to say never to return, but who am I kidding? With deals like those, I'll be back soon. Maybe even before this current pass expires.