Saturday, November 24, 2007

Black Friday

Well, we did it. My husband and I got up early and braved Black Friday. We didn't get up as early as we'd originally planned - my husband stayed up till almost 3 a.m. playing games with our nephew and son. But we hit Sears at about 6:30 a.m. Oh my gosh... I was truly surprised by the number of people who were actually at the mall. The parking lot was FULL... We found a couple of good deals and went in search of a checkout line that wasn't miles long.

Next we hit Best Buy. Now they had their poop in a group. They'd marked the floor with red duct tape to indicate the path of the checkout line, which according to the girl wearing balloons to mark the end of the line, had pretty much snaked it's way around the whole store earlier that morning. They had every regular register open, plus had added an additional four registers on trestle tables. We were through the line and out the door in less than five minutes. Nice.

After that, Target. By this time, I think the breakfast lull had hit. Those who'd been out since 4 a.m. were taking a break. Target was no worse than any regular mid-day, mid-week visit. We picked out new ornaments and a few gifts and were on our way to find a new tree. We'd thrown away our previous, six-year-old, falling-apart tree.

We visited Lowe's, WalMart, and The Home Depot, comparing trees and prices. We ended up back at WalMart where we made a few additional gift purchases and bought the tree.

Then it was home. Two out of our three kids were up. My oldest and my nephew were still asleep, but rolled out when the Christmas music came on, and we enjoyed each other's company as we ornimated the tree. After that, my husband, my nephew, and two youngest kiddos got ready for LAN gaming, but decided they needed a new game. They braved WalMart again, but in the end, the new game wouldn't play on our various PCs for various reasons, so they fell back on the old standby, Dungeon Siege.

Meanwhile, I took the oldest child to work, and hit Target again for a couple of Christmas candles and a new Christmas place mat for my coffee table. After a hot bath to ease the aching in my knees and legs, it was time to wrap some presents to put under our sparkling new Christmas tree. A little JAG on the TV and I was set. By 9 p.m. I was falling asleep in front of the TV and hit the sack.

Now it's 2 a.m. and I'm wide awake. This long weekend has been relaxing. For me, the holidays are usually filled with stress over money: how are we gonna pay for Christmas this year? We're gonna have to charge it. This year, God blessed us with some money, and so far I'm stress-free. We're not adding to the debt we're trying to get out from under. Woo hoo. Okay, so that's it for my tale of Black Friday. I'm relaxing for the rest of the weekend. And will probably put up my four-foot Christmas tree in our office.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, too.

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