Wrong. There’s lots of shopping arcades on board the cruise ship, not to mention that the ship makes frequent stops where she could happily hop onto dry land and shop to her heart’s content.

No wonder she was so eager to go. I just thought she was going to be left high and dry with no place to shop. Duh!

Your ROXY Sea Salt swimsuit?

And your O’NEILL Jordy Freak men’s boardshorts?

No? Then you’d better check out the Swimsuit Sale @ Tilly’s for some of the best bargains on the coolest beach gear.

We still do have meals out every weekend simply because we happen to be out and it’s so convenient to just pop to a restaurant and have a bite to eat instead of going home after a long day out and slaving it out in the kitchen afterwards.

Sometimes we even eat out the entire weekend. Duh! So can you blame us if we start wondering whether we’ll be needing Lipovox soon?

My son, for instance, has had this one tuxedo shirt for years that he only wears to weddings. I don’t think anyone would notice he’s always wearing the same shirt since they all look pretty much the same anyways .

I have some friends who run out and get their kids a whole new set of clothing whenever they get invited to some event. Some of the clothes they only wear once and by the next event, they’d have outgrown them. Seems like a big waste to me.

A new hotel has come up near our favorite shopping mall and we’re really thankful for that. They’ve got a beautiful restroom with clean toilets and even a shower area with a nice bath faucet and shower panels. Not that we’ll be using the shower but at least we feel comfortable using the toilet stalls.

So yeah, going to our favorite mall just got better because now I don’t have to tell the kids to ‘hold it’ till we get home .

The kids got to meet up with their cousins whom they don’t see very often. It took a bit of warming up to get them all reacquainted but it was all good. Everybody talked Facebook and Twitter, and there was no end to the exchange of online contacts. There’s your online generation for you!

At a little tea party we had, one of my uncles was raving about why it’s wise to invest in gold coins when times are bad. Interesting but I think he went overboard with hogging the conversation, and soon we all broke off into sub-conversations and he was left talking to the wall .

But lately due to my rather rushed schedule, I have no choice but to delay my shopping to the weekends. And it’s madness, pure madness, I tell you.

Parking alone sometimes takes me over 30 minutes. Dang, I wish I had a motorcycle. Then I can weave in and out of the weekend traffic like a crazed woman and the only thing I’d need is the phone number of a good Pleasanton motorcycle accident attorney to keep me honest.

You’d think people would cut back spending due to the economic downturn but quite frankly, the sales are too good to pass up and I myself have gotten caught up in the frenzy too.

Anyhow I managed to buy a new handbag yesterday. I’ve been looking for one forever but somehow when I set out to specifically shop for anything, I usually end up going home empty-handed. But if I’m not looking too hard, then I tend to chance upon something I like that’s within my budget. So I’m a pretty happy camper right now.

Now we’ve got two televisions and DH is the only one big TV fan in the house. I guess when you’re a sports fan, the TV is your best friend. The rest of us barely even watch TV on a good day because what’s there to watch but reruns.

They don’t screen new movies on TV so all we ever get are reruns and we hate reruns, period. So DH is happy he’s got both TV remotes all to himself . We’re one family that doesn’t have remote fights.

Poor them. It’s so sad they can’t wear all the trendy shoes in the latest fashion but instead have to make do with the childish pinks and kiddy designs.

In fact, it’s gotten to the point where some of us have joined in the search for them. Whenever we see a store that looks like it may carry odd-sized shoes, we’ll pop in and ask. I hear Dansko has a wide variety of comfy shoes and I’m off to check if they have any of these unusual sizes.