Winter and Clothing 5 Kids

I have already had nightmares about taking my tribe out in the winter time.  5 kids in snowpants and boots, jackets, hats, gloves and scarves.  I think as a good alternative we just won't go anywhere unless we absolutely have to.  It's already frozen here twice.  I want a winter like last year where we only had 22 inches of snow the entire time.  The year before that we had 86.  Seven freakin' feet of snow.  That is a lot of shoveling.  I don't want to repeat that scenario, but given we live in the in North, we probably will.  Maybe instead of all the separate stuff you need we'll just do this to all of our kids.

And since we live in a cold climate, we have to get a jump on getting these items because we might need them early, and they might sell out.  Which is what happened last year.  Owen busted his waterproof gloves and we couldn't find any in any of the stores around us and it was still January.  I am sorry, we had cold weather for at least 2 months after that but Owen didn't have any gloves, just those wimpy ones intended to wear when it is windy out and you need to only keep the cold off, not the wetness.

Chris' life saying aside from "never cut your budget in the food department", is probably "don't buy crappy boots".

We spend a lot of time outdoors and my children have inherited my cold feet- one of the very few things that they got from me.  So we try to buy good boots and only buy the type where you can take the liners out to dry them.  This amounts to a considerable amount of money being spent on them.

First we looked at Target, but they had zero boots where you could take the liners out.  We looked at Walmart and same thing.  So we had to up our search to some of the fancier places.

We went to Gander Mountain and found a nice pair.

This pair was $50.  I hardly ever spend $50 on anything for myself, let alone a pair of snowboots for a kid that will outgrow them in one, maybe two years if we buy them bigger.

Hopped on Amazon and it only got worse.  This nice Sorel was $60.  We are huge Sorel fans because they are ranked to zero or below and do a great job at keeping the toes toasty.  But not huge fans of the price, and it was even worse in the stores.

Finally after more than an hour of searching online we found the first pair pictured above on clearance at REI, of all places, for $30.  And because there is a store close to where Chris works he can pick it up for free.  We did get it a couple of sizes big, one because we found in reviews that they are made small, and two, we wanted to stretch out the wear for two years.  So we bought a 3 for Owen who is basically just in 1 for shoes.  

And this year I am buying a couple pairs of waterproof gloves for each kid at the beginning just in case they lose one, and lets face it, they almost always do.  Problem is, it's just so darn expensive.  Those gloves are usually $10 a piece, times 5, times 2 if they each have two pairs.  Yikes, $100 just on gloves.

It's going to take us forever to gear up and head out anywhere.  I am seriously dreading it.  Even a simple trip to the grocery store becomes an hour event by the time you dress up, go there, come home and hang it all up to dry.  Yuck.  

Being a hermit for yet another winter sounds better and better....   Last year it was out of necessity because the kids couldn't handle being out in places with large groups of people and we still were probably all a little shell-shocked from everything.  This year it is purely out of sanity for me because I will go crazy taking them with all their stuff everywhere.

Although I guess the flip side is going crazy in the house because of the lack of going anywhere.  I guess I am pretty much guaranteed to go crazy this winter.  Not a great outlook.