I have great memories from when I was younger of going Christmas shopping. The malls were always decorated like crazy and there was loud Christmas music playing everywhere. I probably didn’t like being dragged from store to store when I was younger, but thinking back, the shopping was a huge part of Christmas.
Over the last couple of years I have tried to do as much online shopping as I can. With so many kids and working, I just don’t have the time and energy to drag everyone out and about and with free shipping deals, I often get better prices online. But I get sad that I miss, and that my kids are not experiencing the Christmas shopping.
So last night I decided that we needed to go to the mall. There were three things that I needed, and really, the only way for me to find them was to walk around the mall, so I thought this would be perfect! We loaded up the kids, dropped something off somewhere, and headed to the mall. I should also mention that I decided to do this on one of the coldest days/nights so far…the high yesterday was only 25 degrees, so I’m sure it was much colder at 6:30 last night.
The first thing we did was go to the food court and get Chick-fil-A for dinner. We had such a great dinner! We sat at a table way off with no one around us, and we all talked and watched the people shopping. I told John that I was so surprised at how empty the mall was for being this close to Christmas.
After dinner we started walking. I was having such great luck finding the gifts I needed (I needed 2 sets of white elephant gifts and I needed to get my “expecting” ornament for this year). We all went into the Apple store and all three of the kids played on everything. Josh planted himself in front of an i-Pad and played football the whole time, Kylie jumped between the i-Pods and computers, and Ryan just ran around and played with the computers.
When I was getting my ornament (which happened to be right by Santa), no one was waiting to see Santa, so he motioned for the kids to come over and even Ryan ran right up to him and jumped on his lap! We walked around some more, and the boys had a blast in a couple of sports-themed stores. Finally, around 8:20 we decided we should leave so that the kids could get to bed.
I told John on the way home that while I had a lot of fun, I was so disappointed in the “Christmas shopping experience.” There weren’t a whole lot of decorations, and I could barely hear Christmas music at times. And like I said, the mall was pretty much empty.
I know times are changing, and with the economy things are crazy, but it still stinks when re-enactments don’t live up to the memories.
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2 comments:
I hear you there about re-enactments but just think of the fun your kids had, they will have their own lil memories, just like you have yours. Now days the malls don't go all out, and it is really sad. Christmas is the most beautiful time of the year, and as long as you still take your children to see Santa, toys, some decorations etc, they will remember.
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when I was little it was awesome, but now days it's ebbing back, so see each one of us has different memories to hang on to. :)
Rather valuable idea
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