I had some great experiences shopping this year before and after the holidays.  Now, I am still not sure where there is a local TJ Maxx by me.  However, I did some shopping at the one in Wisconsin by my family after Christmas.  It is was just liked I remembered — great items for low prices.  With the economy the way it is, we all need to start shopping at places like this.  You get the same quality items — just at a way better price!

Now, the one of the best shopping experiences I had this holiday season was at Marshalls.  We had a holiday party to go to on December 20th.  Now, I personally hate shopping in the month of December, because well, it sucks.  However, my wonderful little girl outgrew her Christmas dress!  It fit at Thansgiving, and it looked like she grew 2 inches from then!  Instead of panicking, Madison and I headed over to Marshalls.  Now, this was high holiday shopping time, and I was impressed.  They had a great selection of kids clothes that were marked, so it was super easy to find what we needed.  The fitting rooms were clean and large enough for me to go in the room with Madison.  On the way to the fitting room, I found shoes.  I was able to try on about 20 different pairs that I liked.  I loved that they had the little foot stockings at the end of each aisle for you to use when you forgot to bring socks.   Being the weekend before Christmas, I was seriously concerned about checkout.  However, they had a great system going and every register was open.  (Nothing irritates me more when you go to a store that is really busy and they only have one or two registers open, and they don’t open any more).  We had a great experience on Marshalls, and I will definitely be going there for more presents and items for my kids.

What are your favorite places to shop and why?

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If you follow me on twitter, you will know what this post is going to be about.  If you don’t, I’ll do a quick explanation of what’s going on.

I live in the Ridgeland School District 122.  We have had a school referendum fail twice.  After the last time it failed, my school district cut all of the music and art programs and supposedly the after school programs too.  After the last referendum failed, I had posted about it on my blog and had quite a response from both sides of the referendum.  However, here I sit, and Madison will go to kindergarten next year, and we have to decide where she is going to go.

I always said my kids would go to public school.  I went to public school and I turned out fine.  LOL  However, my class size was never higher than 25 kids and that was in high school too.  Since I have no experience with private school, I am reaching out to my readers to give me their opinion.

Here’s what I know for sure — there is no art class and no music class.  Instead it is being “facilitated in the classrooms” — whatever that means.  I had a huge concern regarding this “everyday math” I have been hearing about.  However, my public school is not teaching that.  Her class size would be 22 – 30 kids with only one teacher. In private school, she would have gym, music, art, and computer once a week.  Her class size would be around 15 – 19 kids with one teacher and a teachers aide.

Oh and let me add, the referendum is again destined to fail.  The administration gave them 10% raises over the summer!

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?  Public or private?

Edited to add:  Homeschooling is not an option.  Madison does way better learning when it isn’t me.  I can’t believe the amount of things she learned in preschool already.

Edited again 9/23:  The school principal will no longer answer my questions.  All my questions now have to go through the main district office.  According to the District 122 Ridgeland office, there is no music or art at all.  No classes will go over thirty.  However, they will not create another class unless there are 60 kids between 2 classes (I hope that makes sense), so it could happen that both classes could be 29 kids, and they would not make a new class.  They had no idea what the district was going to do if the referendum fails a third time.  In the past, it was threatened that one of the grade schools was to be closed and/or they would go to grade school centers.  When I asked about that, I was told that was up to the school board.

Also, the raise I talked about was given to the superintendent and the assistant superintendents.

Also the district was asked to put their finances online.  26 other local districts have.  Mine has refused and has publically stated that in a local newspaper.

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I have seriously been neglecting this blog more than I wanted to.  The last two weeks have been crazy, and there is just so much stuff I have to get done every day.  It is enough to drive me crazy some days.  That being said, I realized I have yet to write about my Pampers experience.  So, the first thing I need to do is wave hi to all the fabulous bloggers I got to meet:  Amanda (A Moms Review), Amanda (Oh, Amanda!), Christine (Boston Mamas), Erica (Yummy Mummy Club), Elizabeth (Table 4 Five), Elizabeth (Busy Mom), Heather (Lil Sugar), Isabel (Alpha Mom), Kailani (An Island Life), Karen (Thrifty Mommy), Mindy (The Mommy Blog), Romi (True Mom Confessions), and Stacy (The DeBroff DeBrief).  This group of mom bloggers was fantastic!  We all had a blast, and you all will definitely be hearing more about my trip.

Copyright © 2011 My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact mythoughtsideasandramblings.com @ gmail.com so we can take legal action immediately.