Cheap Thrills

Today after dropping Christian off at preschool, Gabie, Jojo and I went to the dollar store to buy some cleaning products. I walked out with two bags and I only spent $9 and some change. What did I buy? Besides the toilet bowl cleaner and kitchen spray, I found a puzzle, two coloring books, a toy truck for Gabie, and a bag of bugs for Christian.

As you may know, Christian loves bugs, critters, and anything found in nature. On the rare occasions that I have taken him to the toy section of a store or to an actual toy store, he will scan the entire place and leave with a toy snake or a bug creature. That's it. His nana, my mother-in-law, is amazed at what Christian will get when we go the toy store. She will try to buy other things for him, but he's usually quite content with his small purchase. You can bet that makes this mother's heart sing.

And really, kids get so bored with what they have anyway so why buy things everytime you go to the store? If you do that then you get pestered to buy more things for them everytime you take them shopping. So not only am I practical, but I am cheap, er, frugal.

Take Lucas, our little bird. He is a wonderful pet, although he defecates constantly. Poor little birdy bird shall forever have his wings clipped because I am not going to like scraping birdy doo from all the walls, floors, and weasel heads that may be in the line of fire. What a fantastic steal he was -- $20 for the bird, cage, and birdseed! I certainly was not aware of such a sale the weekend we purchased Christian's birthday present. What a pleasing memory.

I left the bag of bugs that I'd found this morning on Christian's booster seat in the van. When he saw those creepy crawlies he was thrilled to pieces and you would've thought he had just gotten the best toy in the world. In his mind, it is. Cheap thrills, indeed.













Christian with a real firefly he caught in Nana and Papa's yard this summer















Christian & Sir Craptastico