Family
Factory Outlet Family Shopping Fun
I always love shopping at factory outlets and do so frequently since we go on several family road trips each year. So, when I heard about this TwitterMom and Gap Factory Outlet writing contest I jumped to write something up to participate.
At the Triplet Connection Convention our four children really are easy to find in this picture. Can you guess which kids are mine?
Since I have triplets, plus one more who is just one year older, shopping has always been a challenge, but it was also great fun to see what I could find. In fact, when the kids were little, nothing thrilled me more than the first time I found four look alike outfits in their sizes at a factory outlet store in Colorado. It's been a few years, so I can't remember what city this was in, but one thing I know for sure: this was definitely my most triumphant outlet shopping moment ever.
At the time, I thought how fun to dress all my children in these lookalike outfits. But as our children grew out of their strollers and were mobile on their own legs, I began to realize that these matching clothes could actually be practical besides. Soon I was dressing the four little ones the same almost all the time and stopping at factory outlets everywhere to shop at stores like the Gap Factory Outlet which always had affordable and cute apparel which I could buy in multiples of four.
Dressing my kids all alike wasn't something I did just because I had triplets and their big brother was so close in age that they really looked like quadruplets in these "twins outfits." Of course they certainly looked adorable -- after all they are my children -- and similar or coordinating clothes always made great family pictures as I quickly discovered. In this picture the kids are all wearing the same hat and shirt, so the fact that they're pants don't match isn't really a problem.
But, the reason I continued dressing them this way was because it made it easy for me to always remember what everyone was wearing when they got lost and I had to describe their clothing to customer service. This also came in handy when they got lost in a crowded sale and I could scan all the kids in a store to find my own really quickly because they all had the same thing on.
Oh the stories I could tell about all the times one or more of our children disappeared temporarily on these shopping expeditions. I was stressed out each time for sure -- but luckily we still have four kids today who are tweens.
FTC Disclosure: I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and Gap Outlet compensated blogging program. See complete FTC Disclosure information that appears at the bottom of MommyBlogExpert's main page and at the bottom of every individual post on this blog, including this one.