Shopping With the Girls

Last evening I took the girls (two nieces and one daughter) shopping at the mall. It was an interesting experience to say the least. My oldest niece was in charge of finding shorts and sneakers for her younger sister (who is blind). Shouldn't have been a difficult job, right? Well we sauntered into the children's section of K-Mart (because Crystal is still pretty tiny despite her almost 12 status). My daughter had stopped off at Hallmark to buy a birthday gift for a friend so it was just three of us at that point. Amanda and looked at the shorts that K Mart was offering up for girls and decided that a. they were obscenely short and b. her father would not allow his daughter to wear anything that short. So we headed for Old Navy figuring we'd have to pay more, but that they might have a better selection. Now admittedly they did have SOME shorts that weren't obscenely short. The only problem was that they either a. looked like they had already been through work on a major construction site for a couple of months or b. were ultra low waisted (also not really very modest). So we were about to give up and decide to go to JoAnne's and buy fabric and sew Crystal some shorts. Fortunately Penny's had a wider selection. Now I will grant you that Penny's had shorts for Amanda's size that were no longer than her hand, they also had low rider jeans, and the destructed ones, but they had in addition some very pretty feminine shorts that were a decent length that fit Crystal nicely. Best of all they were half price, so we paid about the same for two pair as we would have paid for one at Old Navy. It looks like Penny's at least is paying some attention to the people who asked for more modest options.

Then it was off to do sneaker shopping. This was really amusing because Amanda was looking at the rugged sneakers while Abby looked for the pretty pink feminine ones. Guess which ones Crystal wanted? Well let's just say Crystal is a girly girl. So she now has a lovely new pair of purple and pink sneakers to go with her pretty feminine shorts.

One of the things I had to keep reminding myself of as we sauntered through the mall is that Crystal could see none of it. She is so competent that I often forget that she's blind. We mostly just looked like a family of females out mall browsing. It's been really fun having more than one young girl around. I have to take Crystal back this week, and we will miss her. Fortunately we get to have Amanda around for about another month. Of course at the end of that time I will be girlless because Abby moves into her new apartment in the big B-town a week from tomorrow. I'm going to miss them all.