Discount Tax-Free Shopping

I had a 30% off Gymboree coupon burning a hole in my pocket and it was only good for this weekend. I can't seem to pick out clothes that Natalie likes anymore, so I had to take her with me to pick out clothes. Unfortunately, I was exhausted yesterday (from a stressful week) so I had to take a nap first. We didn't get going until about 4:30PM and this weekend is the Texas Tax-Free Weekend for back-to-school shopping. Luckily, there weren't a lot of people at the mall yet.

To my constant disappointment, Natalie doesn't like the girls' clothes at Gymboree anymore, but she did like a couple of the Halloween costumes. Her first choice was the chef costume with the white jacket and puffy white hat, but they only had three of them, none in her size. Her second choice--a firefighter costume. Yes, my little girl wanted a shapeless, mostly black outfit made mostly for boys. *SIGH* She refused to even look at the dainty girl costumes. Her doctor costume from last year will still fit easily, but she was so excited about this one and the 30% off coupon and tax-free weekend made the cost reasonable. She can always use it for dress-up and her brother will still get some use out of it. This one is still a little big for her.

Because his sister was so excited about the Halloween costumes, Eric picked out one for himself. His natural pick was this "Bob the Builder"-type construction worker outfit. It's perfect for him because there is a minimal amount of trespass. That is, he can wear it like any other piece of clothing with no extra material to worry about. He also still has his train engineer costume from last year. I love these Gymboree costumes because they really are built to stand up to constant dress-up use year round.

He might have picked the dinosaur costume, but it was furry and way too warm to wear for our usual Halloween weather. It's always a possibility that it will be cool for Halloween, but warm-weather costumes are more versatile--the kids can always wear something underneath them. The cold-weather costumes would be impossible to deal with in warm weather, especially for my children who sweat very easily.

For some reason, Alex decided he was going to put Eric's construction worker hat on and he was even willing to let me take a picture. I always joke about how Alex has such a big head. That small hat really emphasizes his big head!

So, on our shopping trip yesterday, I was also able to get another couple pairs of khaki uniform shorts for Alex. I want the option of only having to wash his uniforms once a week, so we now have 6 yellow polo shirts and 5 khaki shorts. I also bought one more pair of khaki pants to add to the one pair Alex already has. He is not likely to wear pants very much, even in winter, so I think we'll be good with that for most of the year. All of that was also tax-free AND I had a 20% off coupon. This shopping was the reason why we were running late for the Meet the Teachers Night. I did not want to HAVE to go back to any shopping area this weekend. Tax-Free Weekend is usually absolute chaos. It wasn't bad shopping on Friday night, but I could see that lots of people were coming into the mall parking lot as we were leaving at 6:30pm. I'm pretty happy with the deals I got while we were there.