ah, wal-mart. i've got mixed feelings about that place. on one hand, it saves our family money for our daily necessites. on the other hand, i hate it. i hate it with a passion. it's not the store itself, persay. ok, it is the store.

the idea behind it is great. save money, period. provide things for people at lower prices and they will come. case in point. we bought some totes (7 of 'em) from shopko on sale. each one was $9.99. not bad, not really bad. we had to wind up going to wal-mart for some other things, so i waited it the car. erin wanted to get away from the kids for a few minutes. it's a sad thing when you run into wal-mart to "get away". she went looking at the totes to see how much they cost. $5.44 was the price. needless to say, we bought them there and saved almost $25! that was a good thing.

now, here's my dilemma. i like the fact that we are saving money, but is it at the cost of supporting a store chain that runs others out of business? yeah, maybe they don't "mean to", but they do. i'm guilty of shopping there as you can see, but is there something that can be done about it?

maybe we should all just start buying name-brand stuff. wait a second, what am i thinking. . . ?