Christmas Shopping

Yesterday the girls asked me to take them on our third annual shopping trip to their secret shopping spot…Long’s Drug Store. OK, so it’s not the place everyone thinks about when they want to go shopping, but it works for us. It is in the perfect price range for a young girl, it has everything from small electronics to bath salts. And best of all, for me, it’s not the dreaded mall! For the last two years we’ve gone with Grandma. We would each go our separate ways hunting for that perfect treasure for that special someone. If we happened to spot one another, we would immediately either hide what we had or rush to show each other. Most of our shopping would be completed in about an hour. Then, bursting with secrets and completely delighted with ourselves, we would go out for dinner somewhere.

This year wasn’t nearly as much fun. Maybe it was because Grandma wasn’t with us. She’s a bit of a character and makes any outing more, um…interesting. Instead of coming to spend the holidays with us this year, they decided to stay in California for some very selfish reasons. Like Grandpa recovering from his surgery (all the way back in September, he should be better now) and something about the price of gas that making it financially difficult to drive that big ol’ RV all the way up here. Oh and mutterings about how cold it can get up here. Sigh. No, I’m not sulking. Honest. Anyways, for some reason, being in that cheesy little drug store really made me miss my mom.

I can’t say for sure if we will go back to our secret shopping spot or not next year. Especially if I am still without my mother. There’s also the fact that the girls seem to be getting a bit more sophisticated, and may actually realize that there is a huge mall out there. So far, I’ve done my best to hide that fact from them! Hmmm, I think I will have to haul them into Long’s for Christmas shopping no matter what next year…for tradition’s sake of course.