The Kind of Shopping Even a Dad Would Love

Wow, life sure has changed.  Just a couple of years ago, Friday evenings were spent preparing for the fun that would ensue later that night.  As if it were ripped straight from a dialogue in Old School, yesterday, we spent our ENTIRE evening at Bab.ies 'R Us.  We experienced a small taste of the spectacle we're going to be creating on a more regular basis, and the girls haven't even been born yet.  We spent four hours shopping and two hours checking out.  The foreshadowing was straight out of a book as the girl who saw us at 4:00 and then again at 5:00 said "You're still here!."  After we told her we'd be here a lot longer, her response was, "You better not be here until 10!"  We really we didn't think we actually would be there that long, but we were trying to get every last thing we needed for the babies.  We're not exactly sure how many more weeks Meg has on her feet or as an incubator, so we thought we'd have some fun, purchase some of the items we knew we would need, and make some progress on our nursery.  Why do everything all in one day and submit a pregnant woman to 6 hours straight of shopping?  Extreme couponers look out!  Somehow when we switched addresses we received a Be.d Bath and Be.yond coupon for 20% off of our entire purchase that expired today.  Those of you who save the 20% off each purchase know how valuable this coupon was, especially because Bab.ies R Us accepts competitors coupons.  We also knew if we closed out our registry they'd give us 15% off the entire purchase.   We really didn't want to lose out on the coupon stacking that was coming our way, but little did we know how good it was actually going to be!

As you can see below, this was not your average shopping experience.  In fact, I don't think I've ever lived through anything like it.  As we were sluggishly pushing our last cart to the front of the store, I came to the conclusion that babies were invented as a marketing ploy, with folks like Meg and me as the willing targets.  Babies have survived for millenniums without needing everything we purchased, as well as everything we've already received from the showers that were thrown for us, but we forged ahead nonetheless.



Once we notified the store manager that we were done with our shopping, she had one of those we're-gonna-need-some-help-over-here looks on her face and she called for reinforcements.  They took us over to the far registers, away from all of the other customers.  I assume they thought we would scare them with our five carts that were packed high like a pile of presents in a Dr. Seuss book, or maybe they were concerned that our piles would spill and bury their other customers.  Everyone else that was filing through the remaining line with their "one box of diapers" or (insert item-that-can-be-carried-in-one-hand here) looked over at our piles in awe.  Of course, the ladies that were checking us out kept letting everyone know, "It's okay, they're having triplets" which seemed to provide some relief to everyone who had been temporarily placed into shock.

After the final item on the receipt was printed and the register stopped smoking, we unraveled the receipt and took a picture.  Had I brought any one of my other cameras with a wider angle lens, I probably would've taken a much more exaggerated photo of the receipt, but this one will do and needs no special effects added to gets its meaning across.

Thank you Amber and Jamie for putting up with our shopping madness!



Will we use all of this stuff?  Who knows?  I think so.  I will say that we went a little overboard on decorating possibilities for the nursery, so some of those items will find their way back to the shelves in the store, once we figure out how much actual space we have with which to work.  The one thing I do know for sure is that shopping with Meg, for our babies, was a lot of fun and definitely helped to familiarize myself with just how much stuff these babies actually need.  Who knows, we may never get to do this again, so why not live it up! For those of you who love couponing, you'd be happy to know we actually received $1600 dollars off our bill.  Hopefully, we will never have another shopping experience like this one, but it was definitely worth the effort.