Last night we took the whole family out to run errands. What a job! We hardly ever go to the mall as a family, but that’s exactly what we did last night. I even stopped at the pretzel place and bought some pretzel bites to share with the kids. Considering what a Scrooge I am with buying food like that, I’m sure the kids thought it was pretty exciting.

Our big stop was in the Old Navy store. One thing we used to do but haven’t done recently is to buy the whole family matching Old Navy flag t-shirts. For some reason we get a kick out of wearing matching things. As soon as we went through the check-out line, Amelia wanted to change into her new shirt. One after the other we started filing back to the bathroom, and before you know it, Michael was the only one left wearing the shirt he wore into the store. With a sigh he took off his t-shirt and replaced it with the matching flag shirt. Then we walked through the mall one big happy matching family, and I sorely wished there was a photography place so we could get a photo made.

One other interesting thing happened in Old Navy. I was checking out the maternity section, and I saw a blouse that mildly caught my eye, perhaps because it was actually in my size (XL). I glanced at it and then checked the tag to see how much the clearance price was. How strange. The bottom of the tag read “.01″. Hmmmm. Surely it was mismarked, but on a lark I stuck it in the shopping cart and told Michael I wanted to at least see how much it cost.

As Michael was unloading the cart to pay for everything, he handed the maternity shirt to the cashier and said, “This is marked at a penny, so I’m wondering if you can tell me what it really costs.” When the cashier scanned the tag, she replied, “It’s actually a penny!” Michael said, “I’ll take it.” What an odd thing!

The moral of the story? Buy matching clothes, and always check the price tag.