Black Friday

We had the most awesome Black Friday this year! It was actually the best and most fun I've ever had Black Friday shopping. We went prepared and that made all the difference in the world. Fortunately we didn't get anything big - I think that helped a lot too. We only had a shopping cart at one store.  Being able to maneuver in Walmart and Target without a shopping cart made a huge difference and contributed to our speedy checkout.

Here's a little timeline -

6:00pm - Dropped Howard off at Toys R Us and he waited in line. Lisa and I went back to her house to get the kids ready for bed and finalize Black Friday lists
7:00pm - Got in line with Howard, Levi watched the kids
9:00pm - We were in the first group of 50 people to enter the store. Howard waited in the checkout line while Lisa and I shopped. Picked up 5 items, out in 10 minutes.
9:10pm - Howard went to Target to wait in line, Lisa and I drove to Walmart.
9:30pm - Waited by the 1 item I wanted (legos) while Lisa browsed a few items. Out about 5-10 minutes after the 10pm sale started.
10:30pm - Joined Howard in line at Target
12:00am - Howard worked his way to electronics while I got the toys on our list. He had to wait in the electronics line in the store, so we didn't get out until about 12:40am.
1:00am - Our list was complete, but we browsed the mall a little. Picked up some boots at Macy's for myself.
2:00am - Back to Walmart for a price match
2:30am - Back at home in bed.

Favorite stories -

- A food food truck pulled up to the front of Toys R Us and Howard and I were able to enjoy some hot chocolate together.

- Met some awesome ladies in line at Target! I wasn't able to get an item at Toys R Us, so I asked Walmart to price match. They wouldn't. One of the ladies knew the Walmart manager personally and put in a phone call to him and fixed the problem. We didn't even ask her to do it, but are glad she did! The best part was that instead of getting the sale price matched for $24.99 (leapster) we got it for $15 because the box was damaged. Once again, we didn't even ask for it, but that's what they did.

- While at the mall there were male models in swim trunks in front of one of the clothing stores. Naturally we're shopping for swim trunks in November (haha). Anyway - they looked exactly like the models that are on the posters in those stores. I heard one lady squeal "Oh My G--, they're real!" yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking, but I didn't say that out loud. I was in the middle of a conversation with Lisa and Howard, but when we saw them I went speechless. That's never happened before to me. It's pretty funny in hindsight. The picture below is a similar representation of what we saw at the Columbia, MO mall.

Jack's Birthday Celebrations

 Jackson had his birthday several weeks ago - October 25th to be exact. Howard has been either in the field or TDY for the past month and was home for a brief 16 hours the weekend prior to Jack's 5th birthday. We celebrated early with presents and cupcakes so Howard could participate.

 On Jack's actual birthday he was able to bring snack to pre-school. We made mini-cup cakes. Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (from a box, and tub) Yeah - I'm a great homemaker that way. Ha Ha!

It was so cute watching his class sing happy birthday. A class full of 4-5 year old children  are so cute!

 The Saturday following his birthday was his big birthday party. Since it was so close to Halloween, we dressed up in costumes and decorated the house in spiders and cobwebs. The kids had a lot of fun and I was relieved when it was over since I was doing it solo.

 

We also had a spider cake with eye ball cupcakes. It's safe to say after having cake for 3 days within a week, I'm still not ready to eat a bite of cake.