The morning was terrible. It was 46 degrees out and very windy. Who would have thought they would need gloves on May 1st.
I got the girls up to get ready for soccer, and, had we only soccer to worry about, things might have turned out a little better. But I completely forgot about team pictures this morning before the game. I got a phone call to the effect of "the whole team is waiting for Darby and we only have the photographer for 20 more minutes" and we were still at home, not quite ready to go yet. C-R-A-P. So instead of being ahead on time, we were suddenly completely lacking of it. We booked it to the soccer complex, and we did make it (barely), but the whole team was standing there shivering, and they were probably standing there that whole twenty minutes they were waiting for us. So we took pictures and then had less than ten minutes to get "warmed up" for the game.
In addition to the cold and the wind, it was also lightly raining out, so if you can imagine this dreariest of days in quite some time, you might also imagine that it was very much a day not designed with soccer in mind. But we played on, and we were slaughtered. As though adding insult to injury, we were playing the best team in the league, who likewise slaughtered us in the first game of the season, though in better weather conditions.
We grabbed some lunch after the game with some family that came to watch. It was good to warm up.
The objective for the afternoon was shopping. We had a number of items to get, though our success was limited. Chief among our needs were items for Shelby's upcoming kindergarten graduation show, and party goods for both girls' Sunday school parties.
Items we needed for Shelby's outfit: Short-sleeve, solid red, cowboy style shirt; a red bandana; a denim skirt; and cowboy boots.
We first visited Langston's, a western friendly store, but as I found, not inexpensive. We did not find any denim skirts (not a surpise), but we were able to pick up a red bandana. The boots were just far too expensive considering that I'm not certain Shelby would use them all that much. We also found a nearly ideal shirt. It wasn't completely ideal, because it was long sleeve instead of short. But I bought it figuring I would bring it back if I found something better, or use it if I didn't. Turns out that was a decent choice.
The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting a mall, several stores, and a walmart. With the exception of a denim skirt find at walmart, we didn't have great success in our search otherwise. We did also get our party goods for tomorrow, so at least that was out of the way.
While on the way to another mall to continue our search, I noticed that we were doing pretty well on time, so we stopped at a park and I let the girls unwind for about thirty minutes. They were getting a bit on the cranky and argumentative side after all the looking and no touching that goes hand in hand with kids while shopping. Finally they got to get their hands dirty. And by this time, the weather was quite nice, at about 62 degrees. In fact, it was so sunny at times you would have had a difficult time convincing me that it had been dreary at all that morning had I not experienced it for myself.
We got back underway for the mall, but when we got there it was right about dinner time. So I pulled into TGIF for some good eating (we deserved it), and the girls also had some neat balloon animals made for them. TGIF had a balloon artist going around making animals on demand. It was pretty neat. Shelby asked for a heart with a bear holding each side, and Darby got a monkey on a palm tree. Here's a pic of their nifty balloon animals.
Back at the mall, we went to about every store looking for alternative red shirts and inexpensive cowboy boots, though our search was rather unsuccessful. Determined for this trip to not be completely fruitless, towards the end of our search, we stopped at the mall salon and got Shelby a haircut. She had been bothering me for a haircut since her sister got one a few weeks ago. And now she has shoulder-length hair like her sister (it was about halfway down her back). We also took care of a couple of mother's day tasks before we called it a night.
In the end, I think we've decided to take the long-sleeve red shirt to a tailor to have it made into a short-sleeve shirt. We're going to investigate that option sometime next week.