the croton

i know i've mentioned my love of kroger before at least once or twice.  in all honesty, it's not kroger.  i do like the people that work there.  miss charlotte in the deli may as well be my best friend.  stevie is a  sweet guy who works hard.  jacob and adam are super nice.  miss francis is a little obsessive about getting your kroger card, but she's a sweetheart.  and i love mr. gene.  sweet, sweet, sweet!!  it's just the circumstances that surround my kroger trips and/or the little people that i have to take in there with me that make those trips not so enjoyable.

not so with the wal-mart.  i very much despise the wal-mart no matter which, if any, little person i have to take with me.  it's because the people that work there are so darn friendly, the carts never have bum wheels, they always have at least 2 of their 43 check out lanes open, the customer service line is never longer than 17 people, the customers never come to shop in their pajamas/slippers/barefooted/too-tight clothing, and i never have to get in a fight with a 5 year old over a houseplant.  ????

and i didn't even make that up.  that really happened.

for real.

let me back up.  my two big people didn't have school today.  teacher conferences or some jazz like that.  reed had school, however.  so we dropped him off at 830 and headed to the wal-mart.  i needed to get my daddy a birthday card, some face wash and some bananas.  well, i needed the face wash and bananas.  he just needed a card.  stay with me.  the two little people with me needed halloween costumes because i'm not late at all trying to get them one.  and i like to do it up big and fancy, so the wal-mart was just the ticket.  i don't guess you needed to know all that, but i'm trying to give you the full picture here.

so we got the few things we needed first before heading to the costume aisle.  remind me not to go back to the costume aisle ever again.  it was quite obvious that the most popular costumes this year are of scary looking people with the "scream" mask toting fake bloody knives.  i could have made a cuter ninja out of duct tape and garbage bags.  anyway, no matter how adorable i thought wes would look dressed up as a mass murderer, i didn't think that would go over too well at our church's festival.  so we ended up with one batman and one spiderman.  reed will have to be some hand-me-down superhero this year.  ugh.  can we just dress up as football/baseball players every year?!?

as we made our way out of the store, wes spotted a croton.  do you know what that is?  me either.  i think it's a houseplant.  or a shrub.  i've never claimed to have a green thumb.  it could be part of a food group for all i know.  he has been on me to get some flowers for our front porch.  again...not really at the top of my to-do list.  well, when we came home with some pumpkins from the pumpkin patch on friday, he was mortified that we would dare put pumpkins on the porch without any flowers.  so, he saw this croton and demanded that we get it for our porch.  "it's really pretty.  it has fall colored leaves.  it will look really good on the porch with some pumpkins."  and i didn't even make that up.

i said no. he said yes.  i said no.  he made me feel bad because everybody else had decorations.  so i did what any of you would have done...i bought the durn crotons.  i assured him that everybody would think we were crazy for having crotons on our porch when i'm certain they are meant to be anywhere but on your front porch.  he told me that he would decorate them so they would be "awesome looking" while sitting beside the pumpkins.  so he got out the paint and proceed to awesome-ize the croton.

william put on the finishing touches by hanging some earth friendly ornaments in the tree.

so there.  i now have a front porch decorated by a 5 year old.

aren't you jealous?  maybe that trip to the wal-mart wasn't that bad after all!  HGTV better watch out.  the next HGTV star is on the rise.  and, if you need any help with your outside decor this fall, give me a call.  i hear he's pretty reasonable!