Black Friday Shopping

Yep! Did some Black Friday shopping this week and had a BLAST!!

Now, I know some people are against the whole idea of Back Friday starting on Thanksgiving day, but I'm not one of them. Our Thanksgiving festivities were all over and done and we were home by 4pm. Every year my husband leaves after dinner, goes up north to his parents cabin and hunts through Sunday. So I figure, why not shop a bit!?!?!?  In the past we have braved Walmart for the big TV {my Father-in-Law wanted and other misc goodies} but this year, we didn't step foot in Walmart. We went to a lot of stores though.

We started at 8pm Thursday night At JCPenny with Me, my daughter Maddy, and her boyfriend Chris. The original plan was to shop there, and meet Maddy's friend Orion, and her mom Peggy, at our house and continue on, but the friends showed up at JCPenny also. And turns out Chris just wasn't feeling the love of this type of shopping!! So he ditched us, took our car back to the house and the rest of us went on from there. Should've taken a minute to think this through, cuz I left all the sale flyers, along with my big purse, at home.  I only took my wallet with me and thinking there might be a line at JCPenny, I wore my long johns and work boots. First stop, coffee and some Ibuprofen. Then we were off to the Mall in Saginaw. This is the moment I realized I had WAY too many clothes on and had to hit a fitting room, just to strip off a few layers. Poor Maddy had to carry my wallet in her purse all night.  We hit several stores, got a few good deals, headed to Midland to that Mall. First stop in Midland was Target, where the girls decided they needed new PJ's and changed out of their clothing and into PJ's for the rest of the shopping trip!! We got a few more deals, more coffee and headed to Mt. Pleasant to Art Van Furniture, where we got free blankets and Peggy bought a new couch! We had a few more stores on our list but Orion had to go to work, so we headed back home. We finished up around noon on Friday. We laughed so hard we cried, and snorted. We dealt with several of Maddy's anxiety attacks over spending money on a sweater, she really wanted {she has since decided to return it!!} We drove in dense fog, and on snowy, icy roads. We ate. We laughed some more.   After lunch and a 2hr nap, I hit the gym for Day 2 of the Mileaday Challenge. Ate supper and went to bed!

I've come to few conclusions/learned a few things/appreciate a few things about/from my Black Friday experiences. {As always, these are just MY personal views, you can disagree, agree, whatever}

~The people working in these stores, no matter how bitchy they get, deserve to be treated with respect, they've been dealing with idiots for HOURS on a HOLIDAY!!
~NO possessions are worth fighting over, no matter how good the deal is. {well except maybe that dark purple hoodie}
~NO deal is worth a Mail-In-Rebate. I'm not ever going to remember to mail it in, or I'll lose the paperwork before I get it mailed in.
~You should always remember to pack and dress appropriately for a long night/day of shopping. My feet are killing me even today. Which makes it really difficult to run that mileaday challenge!
~The amount of caffeinated beverages you drink equates to the amount of trips to find a bathroom. And some bathrooms smell really really  REALLY bad {insert gagging sound from Peggy here!!}!!!
~When the hood rats start to roll in, it's time to leave the mall!!!!!
~There are 7 servings in a big bag of Mint M&M's. Even if you share it, there's still a LOT of calories in that entire bag!!!
~Some girls, no matter how old or cool they get, are still willing to shop with their moms!!
~If you are fortunate enough to find friends, {like Orion and Peggy} who you can say anything in front of, who you can laugh hysterically about nothing at all with and they laugh hysterically too,  who think the same idiotic things are funny, who when presented with the most outlandish of  ideas, say "Why NOT!", who are just generally great people, and who you may go months without seeing or talking too, and they understand why, cuz they're busy people too, but it seems like just yesterday you saw them, when you do get together. .. The KEEP THEM!!!

We didn't actually buy that much, or spend that much money, but we had a GREAT TIME!!! Thanks girls, let's do this again next year!!!