We are getting ready to head to Ireland soon! I ambitiously planned to have blog posts scheduled to post throughout my trip, but that never happened so here we are with just a little “On Vacation” notice. If you’d like to keep up with our Irish adventure, I’ll still be posting on Instagram, as long as I can find Internet! @SewGeekMama
This will be Keelan’s second trip! My husband’s family is from Ireland and most still live there so we try and visit every year or so. I’m sure this trip will provide me with plenty of blog material about traveling with a 3-year-old.
Hope you all are having a great summer and I’ll be back to posting at the end of this month!
Also, I’ll be visiting Dublin for the first time, so if you have any recommendations let me know!
This week was all weird due to the holiday on Wednesday. It’s felt like the weekend all week long! It was an eventful week with a memorable visit to the Lululemon store, a second attempt to make decent looking star cookies and all the Fourth of July festivities happening. I also found time to clean my son’s room, which lasted all of five minutes and I got to introduce him to the wonders of the ice cream truck.
Week in review July 1 – July 8
The Cookie Do-Over – Keelan is always asking for “star cookies” since he saw them on a Pillsbury box, so we gave them a second try. Check out our impressively bad first attempt here: Watch out Betty Crocker
This time we used a rolling pin, cookie cutter and followed the directions on a package of Miss Jones Sugar Cookies. Still not perfect, but way better looking! And great taste which is the most important part.
Happy 4th of July! – Hope you all had a happy 4th! We enjoyed hanging with friends and watching fireworks two nights in a row. K loves fireworks, but I’m not surprised because it’s something exploding and bursting into flames. The only thing that could make it better is if it were car shaped.
Lululemon to the Rescue – My visit to Lululemon on Monday was an amazing start to the week. If you missed that story, click here check out all the details of how they handled a blog post with just a little complaint, and made me their newest fan.
I’m Just Going to Put This Here –
You know what that is? It’s the floor. I took a photo to prove it does exist 😂
It’s already covered up again with toys, clothes and kid stuff, but for one shining moment the kid’s room was actually clean.
IIIIIIccccce Creeeeeeaaaam – I’ll end this week’s round-up with another childhood throwback – a visit to the ice cream truck! I have no idea how long it’s been since I chased down an ice cream truck, but we were at the park and I heard the music in the distance, and K asked, “What’s that sound?”
I remembered how excited I’d be when I heard it, running home to beg for quarters from my mom so I could get a rocket pop or an ice cream sandwich, so I decided to let him in on the secret and told him about the ice cream truck. This was the most exciting thing he’d heard all day and immediately begged to go hunt down this magical truck.
I discovered the price has gone up since my youth and that 50 cent ice cream is now $3.50 (gee I feel old, lol) but at least now they take credit cards! So after choosing his frozen treat from the pics on the side of the truck, he was the proud owner of a Spider-Man ice cream bar. It was the messiest thing ever but totally worth it!
Hope you all had a great week and are enjoying your summer! We are getting ready to leave for our summer vacation soon and I’m not sure about the Internet situation so blog posts may be scattered for the new few weeks. I’m trying to schedule some ahead of time though 🙂
Last week in a fit of frustration with a pair of floppy leggings, I published an article titled “Lululemon Makes Me Feel Fat.” What happened next completely changed my opinion of the Lululemon brand and was a shining example of what has become a rarity these days- stellar customer service.
One very happy customer at Lululemon Jacksonville
Within hours of publishing the article, there was a message on my phone from the manager of our local Lululemon store, saying she read the article and wanted to speak with me because that is the LAST way they want anyone to feel. While I was trying to work through a bit of anxiety and muster up the courage to call back, my phone rang again and I did the one thing I hardly ever do- I answered it.
The store manager Vee immediately put me at ease and invited me to come back to the store to get properly fitted with a new pair of leggings. She said when I had visited in November, there were a lot of seasonal workers, and she’d like to set me up with Liza, who had been with them for a long time and was basically a leggings expert.
I will be the first to admit I am the worst at asking for help, so this is really where I went wrong on my first visit. I briefly conferred with the salesperson and then chose the leggings I thought had the cutest pattern. When buying anything high-end, even leggings, you need to be ready to ask for help so you make the right choice.
To say I am impressed with Lululemon is an understatement. Mind. Blown. If I still had my boutique, I’d be taking notes from them on how to handle customer service and a customer complaint. Not only have they won me over as a customer, but I’ve only told 9 billion people how amazing they are since yesterday.
When I arrived, they had a dressing room waiting with a bunch of different styles set up in my size, and Liza took the time to go over what activity each one was designed for, how it was supposed to fit, special features and types of fabric. Not only that, but I was greeted with a personalized sign on the fitting room, flowers, balloons and a handwritten card.
Like I said, Mind. Blown.
My welcome sign!
Liza knows everything about Lululemon leggings!
In the dressing room
They were completely right about my size – I was a six in most styles. Some of the styles with a thicker material I was actually a four! So not only was I NOT feeling fat on this visit, but I was feeling pretty darn good about my gym progress.
With each try-on, I did sit-ups, jumped around the dressing room, touched my toes and basically bent every which way trying to see if they were going to roll or flop or do something weird. This is also something I should have done this first time! Put on those leggings and then see how they perform doing the thing you are going to use them for.
I narrowed down my choices based on performance and finally went with the Fast and Free Crop II. I was swayed by the side pockets and the super lightweight feel of the fabric. And the fact that no matter which way I bent and twisted, they stayed in place!
Winner! Winner! Grilled chicken breast and salad dinner!
I finally get the whole Lululemon thing. I wore these to the gym and felt great. I totally understand what they mean by “naked sensation” now. That actually took some getting used too! lol. But I’m a total believer. My only problem now is that I want more!
I don’t usually write negative articles, but I couldn’t have asked for a better outcome after publishing my previous experience. And after posting about it on Facebook, I found this level of customer service is not an isolated incident. My friend Lindsey responded saying she wasn’t surprised with their actions, seeing how they made her first Mother’s Day special with a gift and flowers while her boyfriend Christian was thousands of miles away running across America to raise money for Help for Children, a charity focused on preventing and treating child abuse. Lululemon is one of the sponsors for his RUN2HEAL event, where he will run 3,000 miles from coast-to-coast with a goal of raising 1 million dollars for the charity. If you are interested in donating, learning more, or even joining Christian for part of his run, check out RUN2HEAL and click “Help me fight.”
So this concludes the saga of the leggings, a tale with a very happy ending! I’d be interested to hear about other companies stepping up like this. Leave me a comment and give a shout-out to a company who has done you right and is a good example of excellent customer service.
I’m interrupting my regularly scheduled funny little stories to confess I totally broke down and cried several times last week and I’ve just had it. This stay-at-home-mom is waving the white flag. I had tears streaming down my face and ear-piercing screams in the background as I typed “childcare” into the search engine over the weekend.
I have a husband who travels way too often and no family nearby, and I just can’t take the strictly SAHM gig anymore. I need more. I enjoy working and having my own income. Being completely dependent on my husband is just eating away at my soul. I feel better and am a happier person when I am productive, so I am doing something about it. I found a “drop-in” kind of place that doesn’t require a schedule and is actually affordable. My son is there right now as I’m typing this, giving it a try for the first time. If all goes well, I’ll officially be a new WAHM (work-at-home-mom).
I’ve finally gotten to where I need to admit my blog is now a business. I’ve started to make an income off of it, and I absolutely love writing again. It’s taken me a long time to get back into it after college squelched my desire to write. My mom experience is what inspired me to write again, and my time with my son is a never-ending source of material. However, I crave time to myself. I don’t think being able to hear my own self think should be a rare privilege, but that’s how it’s been for THREE years. I kept telling myself it would change, and it certainly did, just not in some magical way that gives me my time back. So I’m taking it back.
So right now I’m going to take a break, go shower without jumping out to make sure Paw Patrol is still on, schedule my blogs for the rest of the week, clear out my e-mail inbox, maybe pick some toys up off the floor and not have them end up back there in five seconds and just take a moment to be ME.
Happy Independence Day everyone! It’s a good day to celebrate 🙂
I originally posted this last year, but there have been some updates! I still suck at making mom friends, but I have managed to actually meet a few new people, who happen to be moms and even consider them to be friends. This is progress!
Original post: Let’s start this by being honest and saying I suck at this “mom friend” thing. It’s just like trying to make regular friends (not so great at that either) but harder because you probably have nothing else in common except your mom status.
* I do thankfully have friends who just happen to also be moms, but I’m talking about meeting new friends.
I started by joining mom groups on Facebook. I concentrated on one active one thinking, hey I’m making connections! But then I got kicked out, right on the day I was having a total mom breakdown because I hadn’t had much sleep in two days and K wouldn’t stop crying. Previously that week I had tried to do a meet-up at the zoo with them and totally failed finding the meeting spot and tried to be like, hey no big deal, we’ll just play here at the water park area. Apparently that was seen as “blowing them off.” See? I had no idea how horribly offensive I am.
I also joined a local place where kids can go and play, and in all the reviews it talks about how people just LOVE going there and have met SO MANY great mom friends! But unfortunately I have not met one other person in the 3 months we’ve been going there. Oh, I say hi and smile. Ask the obligatory “How old is he/she” while hoping I got the gender right because sometimes I can’t tell and that seems to be a conversation killer right there. Then we both go off running in separate directions to chase after our kids. And therein lies the problem. Even when I actually do meet up with another mom, we get maybe a few whole sentences in the span of a couple hours. I’m starting to suspect people who make mom friends have kids that stay still and aren’t trying to hurl themselves from the top of the jungle gym or throw toy cars over the fence.
Also, moms are busy. They are terribly hard to set up a date with and easily cancel due to a million different things. The more kids involved, the harder it is to meet up. And no matter where you met up, it’s like hanging out with someone with a severe case of ADD.
So maybe I am a little sad I never had that magical moment where your eyes meet across the playground and you become lifelong pals as your kids grow up together. (That’s how it happens, right?) But at least I’ve got my little buddy to keep me company so I’ll never be alone on the playground.
8/22/17 Update: Check out Dorky Mom Doodles, who reposted this blog along with spot-on illustrations. She gets it 🙂
6/21/18 Update: OMG I made a Mom Friend! And we actually DID meet on the playground! And then we became friends because we are both in the weird situation where we left careers to be stay-at-home-moms and our husbands travel ALL the time. We met on the playground and then ended up going to the same gym, because we were both taking advantage of their 1.5 hours of free child care! I wanted to repost this just to give you guys some hope if you are in a similar situation. It can happen! You can find your mom friend buddy. Just as long as you find someone doing the exact same thing you are, at the exact same time, with a kid nearly the same age. See? Easy peasy. lol.
I originally posted this last year, but there have been some updates! I still suck at making mom friends, but I have managed to actually meet a few new people, who happen to be moms and even consider them to be friends. This is progress!