I need to vent a little. I was going to share some of my resolutions with you, but I guess that will have to wait until tomorrow.

Today's post is totally dedicated to a certain toy store that for this post we will call Joys R Puss. My kids each received $20 gift cards from JRP from my husband's work during the annual kids party.

After much finagling, and after losing one gift card for more than 48 hours, we convinced the kids to wait till after Christmas to spend their dough.

Today was the big day. The long awaited trip to Joys R Puss. Three kids 9 and under. It's like taking an alcoholic to the liquor store and saying just pick one small thing.

We were there not even five minutes when everyone, including me, realized that we had to pee. So we all went to the bathroom and we found the dreaded AUTOMATIC TOILET. Nothing strikes fear in my toilet-trained children more than the automatic toilet.

I have dreams that include meeting the inventor of the automatic toilet and forcing him/her to take my children to the bathroom. Seriously.

My oldest and my youngest took turns covering the sensor so they could go to the bathroom. My middle daughter, who is by far our most stubborn child, was absolutely terrified and continued to refuse to go to the bathroom.

I was forced to use the dreaded ultimatum.."Either you go while I hold this sensor or we all leave and come back some other time to use our gift cards. Your decision."

Well you can guess what happened and we were finally free from the bathroom. Total time: 25 minutes. No kidding.

Next it was off to the baby doll isle, which is middle daughter's addiction. I told her to pick something other than a doll because for Christmas she received five new members of her ever growing doll family. She could not decide. Total time: 15 minutes.

My son now informs me that he has to go to the bathroom again...No. 2. No kidding.

Total additional time in the bathroom: 15 minutes.

Now we are headed to the Nerf gun section. My son is looking for a gun "Not hard to shoot."
On the way to the Nerf guns, youngest sees a motorized jeep and decides he's going to get that instead of a gun. Not a remote controlled jeep. The big one, that you ride in your yard. He proceeds to have a melt down when I tell him it cost $500 and that he only has $20. "It's not fair, all the boys toys cost $500 and the girls toys are only $20. I hate girls."

He caves and decides he wants a "Nerf-like" dart gun nearly the same size as him with "rapid fire action". None of these words sound good to me, but I've already been in the store for over an hour and really just want to leave.

Oldest wants a DS game. Joys R Puss is having a sale on DS games and apparently you needed to be there when they opened to find any. After, trying to barter an additional $10 out of me for more than 20 minutes, Oldest finally found a $19.99 detective game. The same game I tried to show her 19 1/2 minutes ago.

The electronics department has it's own cashiers so we have to check out the DS game there, but they won't ring up the gun. I have to put $1 something on my debit card.

Now it's back to the baby doll section. UGH. After unsuccessfully finding a doll with hair that you can take in the tub that is not a Barbie, Polly Pockets came to the rescue!

Mommy is now skipping towards the check out. Total time at Joys R Puss: 1 hour 40 minutes. Most of which was spent in the bathroom.

After all of that we returned home to find out that son's gun doesn't work. Are you kidding me? Am I being punked? No it really doesn't work.

Thankfully, dear husband agreed to take it back to the store and to help youngest pick out something else, cause I was about to lose it.

Number one New Year's resolution: To avoid purchasing anything from Joys R Puss for the remainder of my life.