Christmas stories: The hunt for the pink zebra

Hubby and I had been debating for awhile if we should get the kids pillow pets or not. Those suckers have been around for ages and I can’t believe how expensive they still are. To top it off, you never see them on sale. I had vowed not to spend a lot of money on them for Christmas and $20 for a single present seems like a lot to me.

About a week before Christmas, we decided that it would be their ‘big’ present from Santa.Both kids had been asking for pillow pets for awhile and it seemed like everyone had them but them. Throughout the year we had seen these things everywhere and in no short supply. We thought our trip would be a piece of cake! The Girl was a friends and we thought it would be pretty easy to do our shopping, have Hubby take the Boy to the car while I checked out and grabbed the two presents.

WRONG! And I mean in a pretty big way. We had stopped at a store the night before and they didn’t have either of the pets we were searching for: a pink zebra and the dog. We originally didn’t think this was a big problem since we live relatively close to more big box stores and they were everywhere, right?!

Off we went, and we were so confident we even took the Boy out to lunch, something we rarely do when we only have one kid. We searched everywhere at the first store. We were about to give up when Hubby found the dog at the very bottom of a basket full of happy nappers. One down, one to go.

We proceeded to go to four more stores over the next few hours to no avail. We were finally about ready to call it a day, and start calling stores around the KC Metro area that one of us could possibly pick up during the week, when I suggested we try CVS. They were advertising the pee-wee pets, so maybe they had a zebra pillow pet.

Miraculously after about four hours of searching, I found not only the zebra pillow pet but the dog too. To top it off they were on sale: buy one get one 50% off. I snatched them both up and homebound we were. Now, I did have to return the first dog to the store, but I was much happier spending $30 on two than $40 on two.

Did you have any trouble finding any of your gifts this season? How long would you search for a particular toy your child wanted?