Shopping with Mom

Today, my mother and I went shopping to try and come up with outfits for our Colonial Christmas Faire. She needs to dress herself and Daddy and I need to dress all three children, Don, myself and our friend, Ken. We started off at K-Mart looking over the left-over Halloween costumes. When we walked through the door, I approached the small crowd of employees gathered around Customer Service to ask which direction we should head but, instead of Halloween, I said Hallelujah! Boy, did that bring down the house. Three or four employees joined in the banter and commented that they much prefer Hallelujah to Halloween. One gentlemen said that his wife's church had a Hallelujah Festival instead of a Halloween Festival. Several other people indicated their appreciation of my mispoken word.

There really are many advantages to living in the Bible-belt. From that point forward, all those employees bent over backwards to help my mother and me. They checked on us as we looked over the remaining costumes and tried to ring up our purchases when we stood still to talk through what we thought we needed. We were greeted at every turn with smiles and friendly words.

From there, we went to the Salvation Army store. We were looking for white shirts, skirts, Colonial-style shoes, men's vests, and anything else that might add to our costumes. Again, we were treated with kindness and the salespeople were very friendly. We found a few shirts that we could use for various people and my mother bought a pair of very pointy shoes.

Although it was late and Daelyn needed a nap, we have a local store that has an electric train outside on the property that you can ride. He had begged me to take him on the train and, earlier, before I knew we were going to take 2 hours at K-Mart, I had promised a ride. So, off we took for Fat Man's (above-mentioned store) where we ran into my niece's best friend, who works there. After a brief visit, we ran upstairs to the costume shop where the Costume Manager followed us around, suggesting various options and helping us find the best prices on what we needed. We managed to escape having only purchased two cardboard tophats, one for Don and one for my father.

We didn't get near as much done as I had hoped and I still have lots of work to pull together costumes for my entire family, but it was a wonderful day. We stopped at Bojangles' on the way home for a bite to eat. Daelyn said he wanted "shiken" and voted for Bojangles' over McDonald's (yay!!). As my mother and I sat munching and talking, we reminisced about all the years past when we went Christmas shopping and met my sisters for lunch. "That was so much fun," my mother commented. "We should plan to do that again this year."

She's right. It is fun when all us Hunt girls get together for lunch amid a day of wild shopping. Somehow, it just seems more like the holiday season when you get to do special things with the people you love the most.

I am happy I live in the south but, most of all, I'm happy I live near my family. Today was wonderful, sharing it with my mother and Daelyn. And the thought of doing the same thing with my sisters during the holidays makes me even happier.

Sometimes it's a challenge living near family. But most of the time, it's just plain GOOD.