shopping torture

So I'm in the middle of a mostly enjoyable 5-day weekend. It would be VERY enjoyable except that I had to shop for new living room furniture and new carpet, which although it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be- still pretty much sucked. We took the kids with us to a furniture store Monday for their Labor Day sale. We ended up buying two chairs and (gasp-yes I AM replacing Grandma's 20+-yr-old "davenport" LOL) a sofa! I felt REALLY sorry for the poor salesman. Though he was in his 50s, he was obviously new at the store. Between the meany salesladies with seniority treating him like crap and his idiot customers who had no clue what they wanted (us), he was running all over the place. As were our kids... We were at the store nearly two hours! (Actually, the kids were REALLY good. They didn't break anything and only whined when we left because they wanted to stay longer!)

Then Gene took off Tuesday to shop for carpet. I don't know (or care) how others shop for furniture and carpet, but we go to ONE store. We do NOT shop around for deals because it is TOTALLY worth it to us to pay whatever the Chosen Store asks so we don't have to go to multiple stores. We went to the carpet store within walking distance of our house and the very helpful saleslady got us in and out in about a half hour. We are definitely going with a Stainmaster carpet in a much darker shade of beige or brown. And it is NOT berber!!! Our only dilemma is we can't remember what color of brown the new sofa is so we have to decide whether to chance that it will coordinate or actually (double gasp) go back to the furniture store. Hmmmmm. I'm inclined to take the chance...

We had some major family excitement this weekend when Logan- after many months of sleeping under Kaylin's desk- decided to sleep in his own bed in his own room all by himself! I removed all the furniture from Kaylin's room last weekend when I cleaned her carpet and then we used that opportunity to fill some cracks in her wall and touch up paint and get everything really clean. She spent several days sleeping on her mattress on Logan's floor with Logan in his bed. I guess Logan finally realized how much more comfortable his bed is than Kaylin's floor because when we moved her back to her room, Logan stayed in his! He's slept in his own bed two nights with no problems so hopefully he'll stay there.

Today I'm going to Bloomington to their educational toy store to shop for Logan's birthday. I'm trying to find him an airport toy that's not made for a 2-yr-old. I'd like something that would accomodate his Matchbox planes but it doesn't seem to exist. I've done extensive online searches and only come up with toddler toys or wooden sets that only work with their own line of planes. I'm considering Playmobil, but he's too old for Duplo and too young for Lego. Argghh. Two years from now there'll be dozens of airport toys!!! If anyone knows of one let me know. I've got until November 8th!