No berry or cherry is safe from me

Uffda. It's been a week, amiright?

Like, a really good week, but a busy week. We kicked it off with some wildberry picking-

and cherry picking-

and then Fourth of July-ing-

And then we wrapped it all up with cabin-ing-

Shelby, the amazing one legged dog!

ALL OF THOSE THINGS ARE VERBS.

One question I get asked a fair amount is "how do you do shopping with four kids??"

Truly it took me weeks to get up the guts to take them all out in public. Just the mental load alone was intimidating:
Do I have diapers?
Do I have size one AND size five diapers?
Did I put the double stroller in the trunk?
Will I have enough time to get home before feeding/nap?
What did I even mean to buy in the first place?

Now we are totally in a groove and it's really not a big deal to schlep the kids around. I mean, it IS, but I'm now used to it. That being said, there's noooooo wayyyyyy I could possibly get a week's worth of groceries. Two carseats don't fit in one cart, and the stroller bottom basket it only so big.

Enter Wal Mart grocery pickup!

(Ahem, I really wish Wal Mart was paying me for this unbiased review. They are not.)

I've been doing this every Monday for months now, and I'll lay out how it works and the pros and cons.

For starters, I don't have the Wal Mart app, which I probably should. I do it on my phone- Walmart.com- and it works just fine. You select your preferred store (not all Wal Mart locations participate) and your desired pickup date and time window. You shop away, pay for your items, and then go to the store when it's time to pick up. You won't be charged until you pick up your order.

PROS.
-A favorite feature is that you can checkout, but addend your order up until about 5 hours. This wouldn't be super helpful if you have same day pickup, but I tend to start my order on Friday or Saturday. I ALWAYS end up thinking of more items I need, so to add or delete things is super easy.

-Substitution. I tend to order the generic brand of items. If the store happens to be out, they'll substitute the name brand while giving you the generic brand's price. This can really add up to be in your favor.

-The groceries are brought out to your car. They have a designated place you drive to for pickup. You call a phone number and an employee loads it up for you. I don't have to get out of my car. I DON'T HAVE TO UNBUCKLE THE KIIIIIIDS!

-I've found that we're saving money on groceries overall because I'm aware of the total before I check out. Think about it- at a normal grocery store, you have all your items rung up and whooops, "that'll be way more than you intended on spending, ma'am!" Seeing my cart total allows me to reassess what items I truly need, and if there are more affordable swaps.

-No impulse buys. Because I'm searching for specific items based on my meal plan for the week, there's none of that "hmm, this looks good and so I'll buy it" as you're cruising down aisles.

CONS.
-Substitution. I've had this happen twice- I'll tell the crushed red pepper story. Last week I ordered the generic brand bottle of crushed red pepper- I have no idea the dollar amount- let's just say it was $4 for 4 ounces. They were out of generic, so they grabbed me the name brand crushed red pepper, which happened to also be $4. Buuuuuut, the name brand bottle was only one ounce. I noticed the substitution on my "your order is ready for pickup" email and alerted the grocery loader guy. He was super polite and friendly and grabbed me 3 more bottles of the name brand crushed red pepper- no charge of course- so that I was still getting the same value. Again, I caught this error, but they were more than willing to correct.

-Missing items. OK so in the 12 weeks I've used this service I've only once had an item be missing from my order. I emailed customer service and within 5 minutes I got a response- a refund for the item, and a $5 off coupon for my next purchase.

-Learning container sizes. When you're shopping online, you have to be aware of what size roughly correlates with ounces, pounds, etc. When I ordered 2.7 ounces of parsley, I did not realize that 2.7 ounces is a five year supply of parsley.

-Bags bags bags bags bags. Wal Mart seems to really love plastic bags. Like, they'll put ONE item in one plastic bag. They definitely do not cram things in, but be prepared to have a ridiculous amount of plastic bags along with your purchase. They do have plastic bag recycle receptacles in their lobby (as does Target).

VERDICT:

Overall I really like this service that Wal Mart offers and I've been super happy with the groceries. It likely varies by store- the guy who always loads me up on Monday is friendly, and always likes to show me the bananas he picked out just to make sure I approve. Quirky, but I kind of like that.

I may not be cruising the aisles of the grocery store with all four kids, but if you're everrrrr in any other store and you hear crying/whining/and general kid shenanigans, it may very well be us.