And the Date Nights to Walmart Begin

Everyone said it would happen. "Pretty soon your date nights will be going to Walmart and grocery shopping." Thus is life.  After a relaxing Saturday (for me-Adam did lots of yardwork outside), Adam's parents came up in the late afternoon so we could take an exciting trip to Wo-town. Basically we just needed to return a lot of things to Walmart and pick up some groceries. Speaking of returns at Walmart, just wondering if their Department of Redundancy Department was in charge of creating the return policy. First, the 89-year-old lady at the door has to scan every item in my bag, comment on them "Oh, you must have had a baby shower...oh this is a cute outfit (only problem was it was for a girl), etc." Then she prints out all 7 stickers on her little gun, then meticulously tears each of them apart, THEN peels them off the backing and plays a fun game of "matchy-matchy" to try to put them on the right product. (Maybe just peeling them off the sticker backing in the same order instead of tearing them all apart would have helped this game.) After patiently waiting for about 7 minutes, I finally started handing her the product saying "this is the baby powder, these are the socks" since the stickers clearly said "Baby Powder, Socks, etc." Then, she placed everything carefully back in the bag and I brought it to customer service where they have to basically do the exact same thing again. Look at the sticker, scan the receipt (which I had taped to each product and marked where it was on the receipt in a fruitless attempt to speed things up), then carefully fold the tape over on the receipt and put them in a neat stack, then finally ring things up and give me my cash. I know the people behind me were getting impatient, but sorry, people, I tried to make this as efficient as possible. I should have known efficiency and Walmart do not belong in the same sentence.

Thankfully, we had a short enough list and a "divide and conquer" strategy that allowed us to leave the store before contracting Walmart sickness. I think I've blogged about this before, but both of us get nauseated after being in this store for longer than 15-20 minutes. It's like a ticking time bomb that prevents us from browsing, which is probably a good thing because otherwise I am certain we would have left with more storage containers and at least one bag of candy corn.  We were as equally as motivated to get out of Hy-Vee on time and then dashed back to town.

I'll refrain from going off completely on Pizza Hut because the Family Style Chicken Alfredo pasta we ended up ordering was actually very good and paying less than $14 for 4 people to eat is a good deal. My tips for improvement, however, include if someone comes in and asks for a take-out menu, suggesting they just look at the menu at the store is not the same thing. Then when you scrounge up a printed menu I can take with me, it does not do a lot of good for it to have no prices on it. And last, don't insist that you have never had Chicken Primavera Pasta when I will swear on my life I have ordered and eaten it in your restaurant. Plus I don't think Calorie Count would just make up this dish.  I know the difference between squash/peppers and mushrooms/broccoli, so don't try to convince me I just remembered the vegetables incorrectly.

Grandpa and Grandma Boone had a good time watching Ryan and Nika even got a walk! Then we enjoyed our pasta and visited for a while. It was a nice evening and we're glad Ryan was awake to interact with them for at least part of the time. He did great sleeping last night again and I'm hopeful about church this morning. Speaking of church, I better get going and finish getting ready. Looking forward to a warm day today!