My First Black Friday

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I haven't been blogging lately because we were out of town. Five days at the beach with my family, it was wonderful. None of us wanted to come home.

Before I talk about my "First Black Friday" experience, I wanted to let you know that the turkey breast I made turned out great.
I cooked it in the crock pot, and it was tender & juicy - I was so proud. I wish I could say the same about my sweet potato casserole, which came out looking like mud and tasted like it too. I ended up throwing it away. I will have to figure out where I went wrong???

Okay, so I had decided to venture out on "Black Friday" for the first time, early in the morning to catch some of those "early bird" specials I'd been reading about for weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. I had my eye on a vacuum cleaner at one of the major stores that was marked down to $9.00. I must confess, it was a Christmas present to ME, I needed a vacuum cleaner.

So, I went to bed early on Thanksgiving night and my husband and I set the alarm clock for 3:00 a.m. Let me just point out that I am NOT a good shopper. I must have stepped out of line when God was handing out the Shopping DNA to most women. I go in the store, get what I want, and leave. I don't browse because it's depressing looking at stuff I can't afford, I don't like digging through baskets of stuff to see what treasure I can find, and MOST importantly, I don't like crowds! I know what you're thinking...what is she doing going to Black Friday? Good question.

The alarm went off at that ungodly hour...I got ready, and we were out the door. It was of course, still dark outside. I decided to take a short cut to the mall, so I went on the new bridge that opened up this past summer. My husband asks if I know where I'm going, and I am insulted at the very thought that I don't know my way around. Yes, I took a wrong turn and we ended up on a dead end road under the bridge where they were doing construction. I tried to play it off like I meant to turn down that road and asked him if he wanted to go "parking". Of course he said YES!...to which I replied, "I changed my mind, I'm not in the mood", so we hurried on toward the store.

We got to the first store on my stop, marveled at the amount of cars in the parking lot, but pressed on to find a parking space. We stepped into the store and I already knew it was going to be tough. People everywhere I turned, bumping into one another. I almost got my head knocked off by some old lady as I was headed to the children's department. I got an elbow to the side as I was making my way down an aisle...I
would have worn a helmet & padding had I known that Black Friday was such a contact sport. Then, it happened, my husband looked at the prices and said "I don't think these are marked down enough". But I have his number, I knew what that was code for...it had much more to do with the number of people standing in line to pay. No joke, the line for the register wrapped all the way around the building. In other words, he wasn't about to stand in that long line to save a couple of bucks. So we decided to leave and go to our next stop.

On the bright side, as we left the store, we were handed a coupon for a
FREE Chick-fil-a biscuit at a particular Chick-fil-a. We had no idea where this Chick-fil-a was, and as my husband pointed out, it was probably not open that early in the morning (it was now about 4:45 a.m.) But wouldn't you know it, as soon as we were headed toward the ramp to get on the highway, my husband saw it...the light on the sign shining like a beacon on this dark morning...Chick-fil-a, and yes, it was open!!! We went through the line and got our two FREE biscuits and were on our way.

We were just about to pull into our second stop when my husband said "look at the line of people waiting to get into Ross" (which was closed & dark). To which I jokingly replied...that's probably the line waiting to get into Target." Sadly...it WAS the line to get into Target. It went from the entrance to Target, all the way down the strip mall, to the end of the sidewalk in front of Ross. The other entrance had people wrapped all the way around the building. We drove by in total amazement as I saw people with their shopping carts & bags all ready for the door to open. Some had blankets and coffee mugs. We saw kids & teenagers sleeping inside the baskets. We looked at the line and I heard my husband say "there is no deal in that building that would make me stand in that line! I would rather pay FULL price!" So we kept on driving, right passed the line of people, back onto the highway, and all the way home.

It's now about 5:30 a.m., we pull in the driveway. All I have to get in the house is the garage door opener, no key. We get into the garage, only to find that my dad had locked the door from the garage to the house. We're locked out! Unfortunately my dad had to unlock the door and let us in at 5:30 in the morning. I went back to bed and tried to act like the entire "Black Friday" events were nothing more than a bad dream. Right before I laid down...I said to my husband, "we're probably the only people in the world who got up this early to shop and came home with nothing to show for it but a FREE biscuit!"