Shopping with the Snarkfest Family

I took my friend Sio shopping last night. Sadly, we were also joined by 15 & 13 who, as you well know, have NO nice clothes to wear. Poor things. What kind of a mother am I that I consciously send my kids to school in sackcloth and ash? Burlap bags on their feet, dirty faces. They look like something out of Les Miserables, no? Poor pumpkins.

OMG I can't believe we have, like, no nice clothes to wear!

As usual, I digress. So we headed over to Kohls where all the cool kids go for clothes. Specifically, Sio and I were looking for dresses to wear to the local Rotary Ball tomorrow night. Yes, Cinderella, it's a ball. My first ball, and I needed something pretty to wear, just in case Prince Charming is there and wants to sweep me off my size 8 wides and take me to his palace on the beach of Maui. Oh, did I digress again? Sorry. We dropped 15 & 13 off in Juniors and headed over to find dresses for ourselves. Unsuccessfully. I DID, however, find some Spanx. Spanx rocks, my friend. ROCKS out LOUD!! If you haven't already done so, please go check out Frugalista's video tutorial on Spanx (after you finish reading this, of course). It's hysterical and she is AWESOME.

Dammit there's that digressing thing again! Focus, Snarkfest, focus!!

So I got my Spanks and a cute little shrug to wear over my go-to little black dress, and Sio got a lovely dress shirt for her hubby (at least HE'LL have something to wear to the ball) and we went on a store-wide quest to find my teens. They were right where we left them, in Juniors, still trying to decide, an hour later, on what they wanted to get. Each girl has to dress up on game days for their respective basketball games. They were given specific instructions. One outfit. ONE. Said outfit could be one top and one bottom, or one dress. Period. The end. 13 found a really cute cream colored dress, which coincidentally, is too short for her school standards because she is her father's daughter. She's 5'5" I think, which to me is tall. So of course she'll need tights. Or something. And 15 found a pretty top and a rubber band which she'll pretend is a skirt. It's like homecoming shopping all over again. That girl is 5'9" in flat shoes. Which, by the way, she is lacking. Shoes that is. Poor thing has no shoes that she could POSSIBLY wear with this top and rubber band pretend skirt. At that point, we schlepped over to the shoe section of Kohls and went on a 'Quest for cute shoes in a size 11'. 15's feet are smaller than 13's feet, so we can at least attempt to find shoes at Kohls that could fit 15. Sad to say, 13's feet are a women's 12. She's my little baby Sasquatch (a nickname she loves OH SO MUCH hates with a passion) and I believe I have to travel far and wide across the lands to find shoes that fit her. DSW and Nordstrom Rack have both been suggested to me. But sadly, there are no DSW's or Nordstrom Racks anywhere close by.  Sad face.

Stay with me here, I'm almost finished!

While we didn't even bother to look for size 12's for 13, she did try on this lovely red hat and managed to look absolutely adorable in the process:

13: "I'm so, like, rocking this hat! Wait, is it on backwards?"

And while we WERE in the shoe section, just for shits and giggles, 15 tried on a pair of high heeled boots which made her appear approximately 9 and a half feet tall. Especially when standing next to both Sio and myself, who are both under 5'2". I now present to you, my 15 year old daughter in her basketball practice shorts, cross country hoodie and a rocking pair of  heeled sexy black boots:

Think coach'll let me play in these?

After walking away from her and giving her the 'We're leaving in 2 minutes with or without you' speech, she headed back to the gigantic box from which the gigantic heels came and I pointed out the one other pair of shoes I saw in her size. Cute, flat brown boots. Poor 13. I fear that child will be wearing mens sneakers for the rest of her life. She'll be walking down the aisle in a pair of Reebok cross trainers. White, of course.

Anyway, after puttering around Kohls for far too long, we meandered up to the registers and, being the high maintenance shopper that I am, had to give the cashier a hard time. As the victim of repeated attempts at identity theft, I now have passwords on all of my credit cards. So when I go to Kohls, every single time I try to use my charge card, they have to call customer service and I have to get on the phone and give them my password in order for the sale to go through. Pain in the ass? You betcha. So we are at the cashier desk for a minimum of 15 minutes. By this time, I'm thinking Sio is mentally putting her house on the market and moving far away from me and my needy, crazy offspring. And I can't say that I blame her.

What started out as two friends going shopping for dresses turned into a scavenger hunt from hell. Sorry Sio. Maybe we'll try it again when my kids have graduated?