We're too much alike!

Okay, so we get up this morning & i think..."hmmm, what are we gonna do today?" then i remember that my good firend, malena is off work today (by the way, she is an AWESOME hairdresser, if anyone needs a referral, just ask me for contact info.). anyways, her daughter, annie and kaia are really good friends too, so i thought, "let's call them and see if they want to meet for lunch and then do something afterwards." so, after calling we decide to meet up for lunch, go shopping and then take the kids to the park.

so, after eating lunch we decide to go to marshalls to do some good bargain shopping. sounds like a good idea...so, we get there & the girls start out calm perfect little angels and malena and i are in the "zone". all is well, then it all went downhill from there. both girls wanted to walk, so we tell them that they can get out of the cart if they STAY by us. that worked for about 2 minutes & malena and i realized that we are more alike than we thought. at first we were doing a great job of shopping while keeping an eye on what the girls were doing, we kinda took turns keeping track of them. as we got more and more into looking at "great clearance deals", we kinda lost track of what the girls were doing. here are just a couple of incidents that happened to give you an example...malena and i were checking out some stuff in the juniors section & we look up and the girls were RUNNING toward the complete other side of the store. so, off we went...me & leia with the shopping cart and malena, noah & her stroller. we were very calmly, yet sternly warning them,"kaia, annie, come here right now,1-2......", and at the same time, it happened...both of us got distracted. in perfect sync, we both stopped to look at something that caught our eye. it was hilarious...here we were trying to be good moms & something as silly as a cute shirt (for me) and a cute sweater (for malena) put all of that "strict mom" stuff to a halt. A few minutes later in the kids clothing section, we looked away for a second (literally) & they were nowhere to be found. After about 30 seconds of saying, "kaia, annie where are you?", a little girl that we didn't even know said, "they're under there", pointing to a table that had toys on it. Mabye you just had to be there, but, trust me, it was funny.

speaking of being good moms, here's another non-very-good-mom-moment that happened today. we both found a pair of ADORABLE platform-type sandals that we both loved, but they didn't have that wonderful little red clearance tag that takes all of the guilt away from buying it on them. so, as we're sadly taking them off to put them back, i couldn't help but notice that the shoes next to them had the clearance tag on them. just for a mili-second, i have to admit that the thought did cross my mind that "that little red sticker looks pretty easy to peel off" (NO, i would never do that, put come on...you know that thought has a least crossed your mind too). then i look down at malena as she says, "hey shannon", and shows me that there was a clearance sticker on the floor that she acted like she was trying to scrape it off.

anyways, to summarize, i am NOT usually like this, i usually know exactly where my kids are, but i think going shopping with a friend changes everything. if you plan on going shopping with a friend that gets zoned out just as easily as you do...don't bring your kids with you...i found that out today!