Furniture Goose-Chase

After staying up until midnight on New Years Eve, you would think that Caleb would sleep-in the next morning. NOPE!! He slept-in until 8am, which was good enough for him, but not for me! :) No time for sleeping, however. We all got up and got at 'em since we had plans for the day. A huge furniture store an hour and a half north of us was supposedly having a HUGE sale---50% off everything! Well, we are quite in the market for some furniture, namely a dining set for our front dining room, so we had to jump at the chance to shop up there. It turned out to be a big mistake!! We normally love that store since they have a great selection of everything. This time, the prices were about normal for them (they still claimed that they were 50% off), it was practically impossible to get the attention of a sales person and the line to check-out was literally HOURS long! The kids were crabby, Chris was getting crabby because he hates crowds and I was getting crabby because we weren't finding what we wanted. The worst part was that we had told Matt and Sarah about the sale, so they were up there, too, having the same frustrations as we were! What a mess! We all ended up leaving without purchasing anything. Chris, the kids and I headed homeward, stopping at another big furniture store on the way. Again, the sale prices were not really sale prices and the selection wasn't so great. Also, we ran into Matt and Sarah once again---all of us laughing because we just weren't finding anything that we wanted!! Finally, my family ended up at my in-laws' house where we were pretty exhausted from the goose-chase we had endured all afternoon. All of a sudden, Matt called and said that we should go to ANOTHER furniture store close by because they were having a sale and it looked more promising. Chris and I looked at each other, both not knowing if we should really go and check things out. My mother-in-law offered to keep an eye on the kiddos, which is huge when it comes to shopping for something as big as furniture, so we jumped on the chance. As it turned out, this store was the place to be!! Not only did we find a great dining set for a great price, but both Chris and I really like it! (We have a tendency to not agree on the same style of furniture.) As we were leaving the store, we also found a sofa set and a head-board that we both fell in love with, so I'm sure we'll be heading back to that store before too long. All I can say is that I hope the first day of 2009 isn't too much of an indication of how the year will be. It was very EXHAUSTING!!!