Hey Dolls
As an Illinois native I am not used to this so called Georgia “winter weather”. By this time back home I would have already been late for work because I didn’t go outside early enough to clean the snow off my car. But here in the South I am still seeing people walking around in flip flops! Getting into the Christmas spirit this year has been hard for me. With the warm weather and being away from my family it has just been so different. I hadn’t even purchased a single gift for Charlotte or John until this weekend!
Being a stay at home mom has caused me to become even more of a shopper than I already was. I am constantly window shopping online. I have far too much time on my hands these days. But this past weekend my friend Elizabeth and I took a girls shopping day out! We left our daughters at home with their dads and ran out the door! Since Charlotte was born, I have spent very few days away from her. Similarly, Elizabeth’s daughter is two years old now and she has always been by her side. So when we get the time to take a day off of mommy duty ,we run with it! It was such a weird feeling to be out with her and have NO kids with us. Don’t get me wrong, we love our daughters but we rarely have time to just be carefree girls anymore.
So obviously our first stop was Starbucks for our favorite fall drinks [pumpkin spiced lattes]. My husband always says women never leave the house together without stopping at Starbucks. Ha, in our case he is definitely right. Elizabeth and I are Starbucks groupies…and that’s putting it nicely. With our lattes in hand, our first stop was Toys R US. It was total madness: the store was full of people shopping for their little ones. As a new mom, you want to give your child everything. I saw so many toys that I thought Char would love. I think I did pretty good by not buying the entire store. I hate wishing the days away but I cannot wait to see her open the gifts Christmas morning. And …maybe one gift Christmas Eve.
Once we made it out of Toys R US alive, we popped over to Kohl’s. Elizabeth needed to grab a gift for her neighbor (she has one lucky neighbor!). Target was our next stop to find a gift for John. I have been wanting to get him a Dr. Dre Beats Pill forever, and Christmas seemed like the perfect time. But in true John fashion he needed to research the product and make sure there wasn’t something better out there. He decided on the Sony version of the pill, the SRS-X5. It’s not cute and round like the pill but it seems to work as well if not better for half the price. And lucky for me, Target had that bad boy on sale! So, I snatched it up and checked out!
After a long day of shopping we still weren’t ready to go home just yet. “What do you do when you are kid free on a Saturday after noon?”, we thought… Ummm, go for drinks of course! And so margaritas it was! We stopped in at her favorite Mexican restaurant and ordered some drinks! Oh and chips, salsa, guacamole, and queso dip. [Oh and John I am pretty sure girls don’t go to Mexican restaurants without ordering queso dip] Face it ladies we all love cheese, anyway we can get it. I am so glad we stopped and had drinks together. I feel like I know so much more about Elizabeth now! We talked about everything, our past, present, and what we see for our futures. It has been very hard for me to make friends as an army wife. I am so blessed to have had her come into my life. The sad part is she will soon be moving, but, more on that subject later. After a few hours of talking it was finally time to go back to our families! I had missed Charlotte and John so much! I was kinda hoping they were lost without me. But, I came home to find the house a mess… and my husband and baby playing happily on the floor. Everyone had an amazing day!
In the busy world of work, parenting, and trying to have meaningful relationships, that day was so refreshing. We all need to remind ourselves to spend fewer hours of our free time on the couch, and more of it doing things we love with the ones we love.
P.S. Don’t forget to enter the Holiday Giveaway !