Visiting the mall was always one of my favorite pastimes. I would take my daughters and we would shop all day. The problem with that was that many of the stores were very pricy. Another thing I didn’t like was the fact that we had to drive all the way across town to get there and it could take quite awhile with all the traffic. Finally, I used a local search option to find the stores we wanted to visit that were closer to us.

Another problem with stores is that you never know whether or not they are open. Many times I went somewhere only to find that the store was closed or would not be open until later in the day. To prevent that from happening, I started taking advantage of the local yellow pages in order to call ahead and get the store hours. This has saved me a lot of time and heartache.

We go out to eat on occasion. Sometimes we traveled a great distance away from home to do so. Much to our surprise, there are many local restaurants nearby that we had never tried or even known about. Taking advantage of great websites like local search has saved us a lot of time and effort. We plan to go out a lot more in the future, we just won’t be going all that far from home!

Most people believe that Friday the 13th is an unlucky day. After the day I had, I will not argue with them. It started out cold, wet, and rainy. Due to the traffic this morning, I got to work on time, but not my usual fifteen minutes early. This threw off my whole day making me feel like I was behind all day long.

When I got home, I found out that Sarah wasn’t feeling well and was going to miss her volleyball practice. I also realized that I had forgotten to put out the trash last night. Well, I see by the calendar that there is one additional Friday the 13th in November. I hope that one goes better!

Spring is here! That means its soccer league time again. I’ll be coming home from work only to run right back out again to take Kyle out to the field for practice. Every Saturday, all the mothers take turns cutting up the oranges for all the kids to eat at halftime.

It also means that its time to start looking for the uniform that Kyle needs. I’m sure that his cleats from last year do not fit him anymore. I’ll also have to look into getting him a new Soccer Jersey, shorts, and other accessories. I don’t mind all the work; it’s worth it all to see him play.

Over the years we have accumulated a wide variety of knick knacks. On any given shelf throughout the house you will find some. Reminders of a trip we took are immortalized by coffee mugs with all of our names on them or by some other memento collected from the little gift shops that abound at every stop.

The singing rocks, the bubble thermometer, and the Rubik’s cube are more examples of the “off the wall” things we have acquired. I haven’t even mentioned the stuffed animals, football memorabilia, and candles. I think we need some more shelves!!

I just got another car repair bill for $289 dollars. My old clunker has seen its best days come and go. I realized the time has come to buy a new car, especially after I broke down on the highway. Thank goodness I was able to call for assistance through my car insurance or else I would have been totally out of luck. There I was, stuck on the side of the road and was truly too scared to get out of the car with all that traffic going by.

I started looking into buying a car, but it was a lot of work. I don’t like driving around and stopping by car dealerships that I don’t know I can trust. Some people will say anything in an effort to get you to buy their cars. I started to shop online so at least I would have some idea of what I was looking for. There are a lot of good cars made by Toyota. I know several people who have one and they all like them. It will be hard to decide which one I want!

It can take a long time to choose the car that is best for and my family. After all, we will have to live with this car for years to come. I was also looking at the Honda civic. A sedan type vehicle would fit our needs as well as being a good value. It will be a relief when I finally come to a decision.