Shoe shopping for three boys is PAINFUL! Excruciatingly painful. Well, perhaps I should say it is painful shoe shopping for a 9 year old boy when I have his two brothers in tow. Shopping for the other two was a dream!

All three boys needed new shoes. I wanted to buy them each two pair. One pair of runners and one pair of shoes for everything else (skate shoes I thought would fit the bill). We headed to Nordstroms today to get them sized (Jax is a 5, Dex is a 2 and Cars is 11). Jax saw nothing "cool" at Nordstroms (just as well since they had virtually NO shoes on sale). I did get a pair for Dex and Cars there but we were in and out quickly because they actually have people working there who WANT to help you. That in itself is almost worth the cost of the shoes. Jax saw nothing that he liked so off we went into four shoes stores in the mall, plus Macy's (they don't carry kids shoes, btw) and JCPenney. In JCPenney, Jax found one pair of shoes that he said were "ok" but they did not have his size, of course. Apparently, size 5 is a very popular size.

We left the mall and headed to Shoe Pavilion (huge store with not as big of a selection of kids shoes as one might expect them to have). No luck. Next, Sears... Sears had a great shoe sale going on and some shoes that Jax actually liked. But virtually no sales people (not unlike JCPenney) and no size 5 running shoes to be found anywhere in the store (save for the girl's section). The one sales clerk who I actually managed to track down admonished me for waiting until the weekend before school to buy back-to-school shoes. If my poor crest-fallen size 5 son had not been standing beside me at that instant, I might have put my size 9's on that sales clerks' sizable behind.

We ended up at Fred Meyer where Stephen had wanted to shop in the first place. They had a sale plus in-store coupons for $10 off skate and athletic shoes. Jax finally found a pair of runners that he really liked but of course there were no 5's to be found anywhere (nor sales help!). I started searching the shelves again and realized that there were another row of shoes behind the boxes that were facing out so we started digging. After 5 minutes, Dex found the elusive size 5's for Jax. They fit and he really liked them. Success!! Well, near success. The runners were purchased but now we needed skate shoes!

(just to clarify here, I told Jax that we would not consider any other shoes until the runners were purchased)

We started checking that hidden back row again and Stephen found two pairs of size 5's but not the exact skate shoe that Jax wanted. After a few heavy sighs, Jax agreed that one of those two pairs were "cool" too. We bought the second-favourite size 5's after Stephen promised to stop at yet another Fred Meyer on the way home to double check to see if they had the ones Jax really, really, really wanted. If so, we'd return the second-favourite pair for the fav ones. Meanwhile, Dex easily found a pair of skate shoes in size 2.

We arrived at the next Fred Meyer. This one is different than the others. The clothes and shoes are on a second floor (the other stores are all one floor). BTW, Fred Meyer is like a Super Target so a grocery store and discount department store all-in-one. Anyway, since Fred Meyer was having this huge Labour Day weekend sales EVENT, they had brought down shoes and clothes from the second floor to the first. So, not only did we have to check in three different locations on the second floor for the elusive size 5 shoes for Jax, but there were three areas of the main floor where they had shoes too. I said FORGET IT! but Stephen *insisted* that we check every shoe area for NSS Green/black/white skate shoes in size 5. No luck. And in the end, Jax was just as happy to have the other shoes so we could have saved ourselves a good 30 minutes of rummaging through boxes, under tables and behind shelves.

So, my children are all now well shod to go back-to-school. And I hope not to have to do that again for at least six months. By then, no doubt, size 6 will be the popular size and we shall have to go through it all again.