Those mad crowds looking for Boxing Day sales

For most of it Bianca has been doing fine. With "fine" I mean mostly lying on the couch watching TV or sleeping or just lying there not wanting to do a whole lot. Certainly not showing much interest in any of the toys and things around the house, even when we put up Caitlyn's little splash pool she got from Santa, Bianca didn't really show any interest that she wanted to play as well and instead chose to lie on the couch. Oh well, we expected this and so we feel really good about our decision to have Christmas early. It has helped though that she has had some longer afternoon naps which helped so that she isn't as sad and emotional come night time. It definitely confirms that next year she will at the very most go to school only half day each day when she's on steroids and then coming home and have a long nap. I just don't think she will cope with full days when she is on steroids.

So this morning we decided that we would go to the shopping centre to get out of the house a bit, have lunch at the food court and also get a few grocery items. We sort of expected crowds - after all just about every single shop offered these Boxing Day sales and so the masses were out again. People really go crazy during this time and just on the 24th alone they recorded a total sales NZ$216 million (throughout New Zealand) for this one day alone!

You would have easily recognised us because Bianca chose to wear this bright pink winter jacket. Now to all of you living in the US and in Canada and everywhere else where you have winter right now, this might sound like a perfectly normal thing to do, but when you are in the middle of summer and everybody is out with their jandels / sandles / flip-flops and their shorts and t-shirts, we stood out pretty clearly. But Bianca insisted she felt cold. At first I stood there mocking all those who were queuing up to buy loads of things they simply didn't need simply because it said "Boxing Day sale" and we went and had our lunch, we bought the girls an ice cream each and then we made our way to the grocery store for the few things we needed.

So there I was on my way to get nappies for Caitlyn, on my way to get milk and tea bags and I walked right past this display saying "all large toys $19.99" and so I saw 4 really cool things that I thought the girls would really really like and I loaded it into the trolley thinking I'll go and ask Terence's opinion. He was waiting just outside and so I asked him to meet me inside. He looked at it, and said that he thought it might be cool for their birthdays. So we got 2 things for each of the girls - before the sale, the total of these 4 things would have probably been NZ$205 and so we thought this was an excellent deal for their birthdays next year. Of course Terence did mock me terribly and said "all those mad people buying things they don't need because it's on sale?", I still maintain this is different and we know their birthdays will be coming up, so if it is much cheaper now then we may as well get it and put it away. Perhaps next year we should do our Christmas after Boxing Day and do our Christmas shopping when they have Boxing day sales on :-).

And even though we had the girls with us, Bianca didn't show any interest in our purchases, she didn't ask to see the boxes, she didn't ask about it, she didn't ask to hold it or anything which really just confirms that she is not 100% herself. Lucky tomorrow is the last day of steroids for this month and we can hardly wait.