Thanksgiving & Black Frightday Specials

I really like Thanksgiving. It is much of the great food of Christmas w/o the pressure and hassle of gifts. Since Shannon has been gone a lot, we decided that spending Thanksgiving close to home sounded great. So, after our morning service we headed to his dad & mom's. It was almost the whole family. The Wegs were in Iowa. It was a wonderful, relaxing day. I am overwhelmed by the endless list of reasons we have to be thankful!!

Grandma made the kids their own special table since they couldn't be at the adult table.

The matriarch at work.

The "grown-up" table

Mmmmmm!

Scrabble has become a tradition in the afternoon. We also played Clue and Dutch Blitz.

Well....I'm not really a black Friday kind of shopper, but leading up to the holiday, Shannon and I did some price research on a few items on our kids' wish lists and decided that it might be worth it to try it out this once. Let me just give you this advice: If you are going to play the game, you need to know the rules. We didn't. The Walmart flier advertised the desired specials to be available from 5-11am. So, being very savvy indivduals, we arranged for our kids to be overnight w/ cousins and grandparents and set our alarm for 3am. We figured that would give us time for a stop at Starbucks before hitting the jackpot.

First of all, the traffic in town at 4am was like a typical Saturday afternoon. There was a long line in the McD's drive thru and the Starbucks manager informed us that they had a line out the door at 2am, although they were not supposed to open until 2:30.

So...on to Walmart where the parking lot was packed. We headed to the back of the store where the desired items could be found. There were pallets of items in the middle of the aisles and long lines for certain ones. There were people EVERYWHERE!! I couldn't seem to find any of the 3 things we came for so I finally asked an employee who informed me that they sold out at 2:30. "I thought the special starts at 5," I said. Well here is where the "rule" part comes in. Turns out you can get in line at midnight to get an armband and THEN get in line, but w/o the armband, you are not getting the item. By this time, it was probably after 5 and Shannon and I looked at eachother like, "Why are we here?!" Feeling defeated and more than a little silly for our lack of preparation, we hit a few other stores and found very little before heading home. Somewhere along the line, I had heard that similar deals can be found online at the same time as they occur in the stores. Not willing to totally give up, I crawled back into bed w/ my laptop to give it one last shot. JACKPOT!!!!! Two of the three items were being sold for the ad's price online w/ no charge for shipping! The third item I found for a better price on another site! So...next year, I will have Shannon brew me some Starbucks and shop from bed. Thank you internet.