Holiday shopping = hell

Today was an odd day indeed. My husband, Steve, had a Saturday off. Something which never happens with his schedule ever, especially because he is in retail AND it's the holiday season. We are driving from Maryland to Florida this year for the holidays (talk to me in a week or so and I'm sure my idea of hell will have changed from holiday shopping...) because of this we are trying to get all our gift shopping done by Monday so that we can ship out the gifts to the side of the family we won't be seeing and have everything wrapped and packed for the family we will be seeing. That meant that today was our shopping day. Off we went to the mall with our two children (Lily, who is 2 and Sofie who is 10 months), no stroller, and a need to get a tune-up/oil change on my car. We started by dropping off the car at sears to get the oil change done...effectively trapping ourselves in the mall for 4 hours as there was a line of cars ahead of us. No problem, right? we can kill 4 hours in the mall. Famous last words. The good news is that everyone did in fact make it home alive, the car now has its oil changed (and a new cargo container on the roof) and I wore Sofie on my back in my earthy rainbow wrap comfortably for the whole time with people ooh-ing and ahh-ing over her/it. I have to say that I was a little hesitant about the price tag of the wrap initially but today it proved it worth plus, Sofie was content and cozy (and out of the way!) drifitng between staring at everything amazed and napping. Lily on the other hand went back and forth from "cute and spirited" to absolute spaghetti-legged hell child as is her normal routine (can't make everything perfect lol) at least this trip we weren't dragging an empty stroller behind us the whole way through the crazy sea of people. My advice? avoid the mall at all costs the second to last Saturday before Christmas (a tidbit which any sane person would have already learned long ago but hey! we don't fall into that category in this household.)