Church shirts, t-shirts, and candy

When trying to find something for my middle son to wear to church with his grandparents tomorrow, I realized that none of his "church shirts" fit anymore. He doesn't have any party shirts (Hawaiian shirts) or polo shirts that would work, and God forbid, regular button-down shirts. I don't think we have many of those left anyway, just a few that I've hung onto for my youngest, but he really doesn't like them either.

Since our church is a "come as you are" church; my middle son typically wears a tie dye shirt that he made at church on Rally Day. As it turns out, he's not going to go with his grandparents after all, but I realized now that the warmer weather is here, he needs some new short sleeve shirts to add to the tie dye, the Mystic Pizza "slice of heaven" and the new Destination Imagination shirts he wears.

I went to Target, because I needed more Easter candy -- not only because I broke the candy I had already cleverly bought out last Sunday during egg coloring with friends, but also because we had an egg hunt with some other friends on Wednesday. In addition, I have sampled far too much of it!

But for the first time that I can remember, I stood in the boys' department and actually had trouble figuring out what to choose for my son. I probably could have bought him all Patriots and Red Sox licensed team apparel and he would have been happy, but it also would have been costly. I didn't want to buy him anything with trucks, superheros, skateboarding, soccer, or skulls. That left stripes. Too risky. No collar shirts or polo shirts. And I didn't want to get generic shirts that said, "College Athletic Dept." I had whizzed right through every other department I visited in the store, except this one. I was stumped.

I looked around to see what others were looking at. There were not too many other shoppers there -- and the Easter candy shelves were practically bare, too -- no doubt because it was late on the eve of a holiday weekend, but a pair of women were looking at "church clothes." I decided I'd just have to trust my judgment and picked out four shirts -- two blue, one white (probably going to regret that), and one black -- various sports themes and one of the blue ones had a quote from Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Tomorrow I will see how closely aligned my judgment is with my son's taste. That is, if he can see anything at all past the Easter candy, much of which I still have to divvy up into the plastic eggs and hide on behalf of the Easter Bunny, in whom my kids all still believe (or want to, anyway, in the case of my oldest).