Black Friday

It took me all day to re coop from our Thanksgiving festivities and Black Friday madness.

We had a great time going to my aunt's house and eating till our sides hurt.

My cousins and family are great.  The older we get, the more we seem to have in common, even though I am the oldest cousin by 6 years.  (my youngest cousin and I have 17 years between us.)

Once our food settled somewhat, we headed for home, and the kids and I went right to bed.  (It was 4:30pm)

We had a BIG night planned.

I wasn't sure if I was on board or not, but we forged ahead.

At 8:30 pm, the kids and I headed out to Target for their 9pm Black Friday opening.

It was C-A-R-AZY!!!  The line started about 5 stores away from the front of Target.

But it moved VERY FAST.  Once you got inside, you had to file single file through the aisles.  It was total and complete MADNESS.  I had one thing for Brent in mind, and I got it, with only a few to spare.  WHEW!

This was Evan's first time going with us.

I was a little unsure of how that would go.  He's my sleeper, and when he falls, he falls HARD.  I didn't know if he could make it all night.

Once we were done at Target, I got a text from two of my cousins who were a couple stores away.  They wanted to know if we could all ride over to the mall (45 min away) for the next jaunt.  This wasn't planned, but we met up, and went together, and had a blast!

We stayed out till 4:30am, with a stop at Steak and Shake on the way home for "Happy Hour" from 2-4am.  1/2 price milkshakes...Evan was in heaven! 

There was one point in the night when we were in line at a store for 1 hour, when it looked like Evan was gonna hit the floor, but he rebounded well, and made it through the rest of the night.

The kids and I made it home about 5:30 am, and went straight to bed, only to sleep till about 11am.

It was a good time (I think), and we made some good memories. 

'Course today was set aside for Christmas decorating.

We started by turning on our FAVORITE movie ever.

ELF.  Classic, and hilarious!

The village got set up,  (My own PUTZ glitter village that I made myself out of wooden bird houses, scrapbook paper, and glitter.  LOTS of glitter...) with plenty of snow and  trees.

Grace set up the tree with "flair."

and Oreo staked out her spot for the whole Christmas season. (She loves the tree skirt.)

There were shiny brites...

lights...

and flocked trees galore.

It was a good relaxing day. 

As for Black Friday next year...well...we'll see.