Letting the baby drive

After we went out to breakfast this morning for my birthday (paid for by very generous friends, yay!) we weren't sure what to do with ourselves. It was 9 a.m. on a Saturday and we were already out, dressed and fed. Nothing here is really open that early, so Stephen decided to offer to let Ben choose what we would do. He asked him if he wanted to go home or on a drive.

He picked drive. And then, just for fun, we went ahead and let him choose where we'd go. Not like, "where do you want to go?" but like, every time we came to an intersection, we'd say "left, right or straight?" and he'd pick. And amazingly, in a slightly, but actually not very roundabout way, he started heading the car straight for the mall! Ha ha ha. We warned him that the mall doesn't open until 10 a.m. on Saturday, but that we would look just to be sure. (That way, we weren't the bad guys by saying "no") and sure enough, Penny's was having a special early bird promotion. Every thing in the store was super on sale. We got holiday gifts for my mom and his mom, and still had $10 left to spend to get a $10 off coupon. So basically, we were shopping for free at that point. Stephen found the clearance rack in his section and picked out three really nice polo type shirts that were on sale for $2.97. These were $30 shirts!!! Not like he needs shirts, but we got three nice ones for free, so hey, who can argue?

Next we went out into the mall, (it was 10 a.m. by now) and were planning on letting Ben do what he wanted, but then we saw that the liquidation store had closed for good and was putting shopping carts out front of their leftover merchandise, marked FREE.

Holy crap! We got lightbulbs, several books, some clothes, an Easter basket for Ben and some kale seeds for next spring. Actually, we got more than that but I don't remember it all. A Halloween mask, I think. Anyway, our Penny's receipt said we saved $150 and who knows how much all the free liquidation store stuff was worth. All because we decided to let Ben drive. :-)