Did I tell ya' about Christmas Village?

Each year, Krista, Mom & I try to go to Christmas Village, a (huge) local arts & crafts show.
I love my sister, I truly do, but her idea of shopping...  No item unobserved, no price tag unturned, let me tell you!  I've had to drag her out of of jewelry boutiques; we don't wear jewelry!  (What were you hoping to find in there?)  At thrift stores, she goes through every single rack.  Scraaaape.  Scraaaape.  Scraaaaaaape.  But I digress.
This year, I couldn't take off work, so we said, "Why not Saturday?!"  Why not, indeed.  What a stupid question.  We should have known better.  We decided to get there when they opened (aka- get up early on a Saturday).  So we got there about 45 minutes after they opened.  (Late, as usual.)  Oh, goody.  Just in time to shuffle along with the crowd.  See, walking was impossible.  We just sort of rocked back and forth, step by step.  At one point, I'm pretty sure we weren't actually moving forward; I think we were just rocking back and forth, pretending to move!  And if you saw something you liked, good luck!  It takes a brave, brave person to cut in front of rabid-shopping southern women.  (By the way, big hair and heavy makeup are still alive and well down here!  Shooee!  Impressive stuff.)
Krista had arranged childcare (more on that later!), and Madelyn Rose was the only little one with us.  She was darling.  Everyone remarked on her precious outfit, adorable shoes & etc.  (She really is the cutest thing!)  But, well, even cute little things have accidents.  Umm-hm, big, stinky accidents that creep out of their diapers, onto their precious outfits, their snugli, and the person wearing said snugli.  (Yep, that would be me.)  Okay, nothing three competent women can't handle!  We headed for the restrooms.
With 70 other cranky, desperate women who were in various stages of panic.  As I frantically politely barged stepped into the bathroom, someone let go of the door.  The large, heavy door.  The large, heavy swinging door.  Behind me.  Which hit me squarely on the back of the head, hard enough to make me black out for a second.  Lovely.  I am in the Christmas mood now.  On to rinsing out the precious outfit in the sink, drying it with a blowdryer, and lying about it.  ("Sure, it's fine.  No, no, doesn't smell.  Barely anything on it."  Right.)
We continued our shopping, but I've gotta say, I lost some of my spunk in that bathroom.  After a while, the crowd thinned out, but I was flagging like a marathon runner with the flu, when my sweet hubby called.  Said that a certain energetic 3-yr-old was ripping around our house, did I know anything about that?  Oops, did I forget to mention that?  I volunteered our DVD player, since Nana's is out-of-service.  Well, apparently Nana was just about out-of-service too!  After several hours of Patrick, Daniel said she was sitting on our couch watching Little Einstein while Patrick went nuts.  (Well, they are interesting videos.  And to be fair, Uncle Danno has a fairly low tolerance for bedlam...)
"We'll just hurry and finish!"  Well, that's what she said.  Why, oh why, did I believe that?!  Yep, that last 2 hours of shopping just flew by!  ;-)  Aching feet, pounding heads, sore backs, and lighter wallets later... 
Hmmmm, when's next year's show?! 
Maybe in my next post I'll show you some of my goodies...