"You've reached Tommy's phone. You can now leave a message after the beep!"

It's that time. Every 2 years or so, one of our cell phones starts acting up. Usually Tommy's. (wonder why that is?) This time? His phone wouldn't tell him he had a voice mail. He would have to periodically check to see if someone called him. Heaven forbid it's an emergency! Time to go in and make the dreaded trip to the cell phone store. With the kids. (!!!) I usually prepare myself for a LONG trip there, with kids getting antsy, mommy getting frustrated with all the choices, and Tommy tuning out all the noise the kids are making. We have a new cell phone store nearby, that should be quieter, I think, so we try that one.

We storm in with the baby almost sleeping in my arms, Emma sleeping (or pretending to sleep) in the big stroller, and Patrick just ready to push all the buttons and read all the features to me. Thankfully, there was nobody but the 2 workers there. You can tell right away that one of them knows his stuff and the other isn't quite as, um, what's the word? informative, shall we say. Boy, did this guy "inform" us. We learned about EVERYTHING in the store. I think I could have a new job now. We pick our phones, and this is where it gets interesting. Salesman A now has to leave. Salesman B is going to help us finish up. Now, we all know that this part takes the longest. Right about this time, Emma is up and ready to go. Now it's HER turn to pull, push and tug at all the phones. Poor B. He needed help. It took him a REALLY long time to set up the phones. I think he was new-ish. I think Tommy actually fell asleep while he was working on setting up the phones. We've done pretty well up to this point. Now it's climb the walls time. Even William is out of the stroller, crawling, pulling and getting into stuff. I start taking at least 2 kids to the car, one is a little more reluctant to leave. (to put it mildly) It's finally finished, and I say I am heading to the shoe store. Well, why not? I get my phone and try to call Tommy. Get some funky message thing. Try again. No go. We realize the guy has given us the wrong phone numbers to the wrong phones. Tommy takes it back to the store and tells them. B's answer?
"You can call the company and tell them."!!!!!

We're home now, with the correct phones and numbers, and I am trying out a sleek new slide phone that is red! The screen has this vibrate function that works when you touch the buttons. Yes, yes, I know that has probably been around for a while, but I have not had anything like this. I think Patrick is more excited about my phone than I am. Actually, BOTH the kids asked me for a cell phone today. Whoa. Waaay too early for that.