Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Sorry for the lack of posts the past few days - hope you guys didn't forget about me, just been a tad busy these past few days with Thanksgiving and the kick-off to the Christmas season!

Our Thanksgiving was spent sleeping in, since hubby didn't have to work, and then we drove the hour and 15 minutes out to his parents house later that afternoon. It was a nice car ride, as we listened to the traditional Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game and chatted as well - true, spend time together at home, but a lot of the time one of us is busy doing something online or we're watching TV or a movie together, so we didn't get to really chat all that much about random stuff.

We got out to my in-laws house by 430 and hubby showed off his new expensive "toy" (a new Samsung Galaxy Android operated tablet, aka the Droid version of the iPad) to his family. We weren't able to watch the game on their TV, so hubby found a feed on his tablet and we watched the last half on there while we waited for dinner to be ready and his other brother to show up (we were all told dinner was at 6pm and to be there by then, but of course he was at least a half hour late like he usually when we're all out there for a holiday meal).

Dinner was delicious and we sat around and chatted and joked with the family for a few hours before everyone started heading off - one of my brother in-law's had to get to bed as he had to open his Verizon store 30 minutes away at 6am, another (who's a DM) had to be at the Sterling mall location to help open it at 3am when the mall down there opened, and hubby and I had to head back into town as we were going to stand out in line at Target to try and get that $298 40" flat screen LCD HDTV.

We stopped at a gas station on our way back into town to grab bottled water, use the restroom, I got a hot chocolate and changed out of my heels and nice top into sneakers and a hoodie.

We got back into town just after midnight and noticed on the drive over that some people outside Best Buy had tents up, although the line there wasn't too bad yet. The Old Navy parking lot (which is shared with Target) was packed though as they opened at midnight. We were a little scared pulling in (hubby said if the line was already around the building then we'd just forget it), but we saw that the line outside Target was only between both sets of entrances so hubby dropped me off while he parked the car and brought the folding chairs and blankets. It was just barely 20 degrees out and there was roughly 50-60 people ahead of us in line.

By 130am, Jay woke up and parked himself on my bladder, which was full again due to me drinking a large hot chocolate. Hubby held our spot while I got warmed up in the car and drove to a nearby gas station to use the restroom and bring us back more hot drinks. When I got back hubby hopped in the car and drove home to put more layers on as he wasn't quite prepared enough for the cold. He came back with layers on and his heavy thermal socks on his hands as he claimed they were warmer than his work gloves. I waited with him a bit until about 230am when I went to go warm up in the car again. I stayed for a good 20 minutes or so and shortly after hubby took his turn.

That's when things got a little nuts.

Hubby's tall so you can see him, I'm just next to him

About 5 minutes after he went to the car, the Target manager and employees showed up and for some reason, the line we were in started moving up in a rush while half of us were sitting. Trying to keep up, I grabbed our chairs, blankets and other stuff (we were planning on putting them away at about 345am and here it was just after 3am) and attempted to call hubby 1-handed, telling him to get his butt over here as the line just moved up and we got put about 50 people further back. He came running up, took my spot in line and I threw the rest of our stuff in the car and rejoined him. By 345am everyone was in a big clump rather than an actual, but fortunately we were in the front portion of the clump. Hubby had a bit of an advantage as he's tall and could see over most of the people ahead of us and has long legs so he could take bigger strides (as the staff had warned that anyone caught running or sprinting would be kicked out). A guy behind him got his attention, asking if we were going for the TV which we said we were. He pointed out hubby's advantage and said he'd give us $20 if hubby grabbed an extra TV for him and held it til he got there. $20 bucks is $20 so hubby said he would try to do that.

At 4am they let us shuffle in (literally as we were all corralled between a line of cars and the doors near the entrance). Hubby went on ahead (they had passed out store maps with locations of key items on it) while I veered off to the right to get a shopping cart and out of the way of the rush to the TVs. It was a bit of a mess as they had sections roped off to keep a flow going for checkouts so I had to take an alternative path to meet hubby at our meet up spot, all while getting my ankles smacked by people with shopping carts behind me.

Hubby got 2 TVs though - 1 for us and one for the guy that was behind us! He said they had maybe 50 of the 40" ones and 60 of a 32" and both were nearly half gone by the time he got there, but he was able to get to them and just pull 2 out and off to the side with no problem. He said a bunch of people missed out as they stopped to get a shopping cart rather than go straight for the item first.

There's hubby, near the front of the pack, bypassing the shopping carts, which is where I veered off to in order to get out of the way.

We waited a good 15 minutes or so for that guy though but we never saw him again! My guess is he got one on his own, but who knows. Debating what to do and standing near where the pile of TVs were, a woman asked us if they were all taken. Hubby confirmed it and she commented that that was all she really came for and was looking a little bummed. Hubby asked her what it was worth to it, which she was a little confused and asked what he meant. He told her for $20 he'd just conveniently walk away from the one that wasn't in our shopping cart and it'd be hers for the taking. Her face lit up and she was all "Really??" He nodded, she pulled out a $20 and we went about our way. We hung out a bit more around the store before hubby jumped in one of the monstrous check out lines (in which the one we were in took us past the baby gear and clothing section, which was torture for me as everything looked so darn cute!) and got plenty of people who ended up with the 32" and a 60" offering to trade us which was kind of amusing.

The only other items I was really wanting to get where these fashion scarves for $5 each (50% off) as they had in the ad several different colors that would look cute with some of my outfits. While hubby waited around for the other guy to show up, I went off to look for the scarves. My first stop was the obvious accessories department, but a lady over there said they were on the other side of the fitting rooms. Myself and another girl who was looking for them went there, but no go. We walked around the clothing department and asked an employee over there who told us they should be near the cleaning supplies, but again, no luck. We went back and told the guy they weren't there, so he left his partner to help assist us. He ended up asking the girl working the fitting rooms and the general consensus of all the employees we spoke to were "I don't know, I don't think we got any of them." Way to fail, Target - advertise something in your Black Friday ad that you don't actually have.

We did get a few movies for cheap - Elf for $3.99 and Alvin and the Chipmunks for $5.99 (we both enjoyed it in the theater and I'm pretty sure Jay will like watching it too) and I took a look to see what Wii games were on special sale, but nothing we really wanted. I also checked the price on Xbox's and PS3's at hubby's request, but they were all out of Xbox's by that point and the only PS3 I could find wasn't on sale. I did get myself a large fitness/labor ball to use for $10 though, as it was something the hospital said we could bring for labor and recommended we as pregnant ladies get - I was sitting on my mother-in-law's for a bit when we were at their house and it was actually really comfortable to sit on, keeping my back straight! We also picked up a gift for one our nephews.

We got home by 6am (we literally spent at least an hour in the checkout line), hubby went straight to bed as he had to open his Verizon store by 830am and needed a bit of a nap prior to working, and I soon joined him, however I didn't have to be at work until 5pm.

I slept til about 130pm and took my time before heading out to the mall at 4pm, as I anticipated it to be crazy busy with parking all chaotic. To my surprise, by then it wasn't so bad! Seems the crowds had died down as the afternoon and evening went on.

I had gotten our 2nd $25 Gamestop giftcard so I stopped in there to pick up one present, waiting in line for about 15 minutes as they had all 3 registers open, but all 3 guys that were cashiering were literally taking several minutes per transaction when each person was only buying like 1 game. The line had no real organization to it and oh my gosh! They needed at least 1 fan in there, as it seriously felt about 100 degrees in the store at least. Being that it's in the mall, it's a smaller, more compact store and I wasn't the only one using the video game box as a fan! I was amused that I got carded for the game we were purchasing though.

I next headed over to Barnes and Noble to pick up the other gift I needed to get out there that we weren't ordering. It took me a few minutes to find it, as the moved it's location, however once I found it I was in and out, as their checkout had no lines!

I hurried upstairs, even though I had 20 minutes til I had to be at work. One of that guys working at one of the 2 Verizon kiosk's that hubby's store is connected to it tried to sell me a car charger. I kinda laughed and was like "but my husband works at the [store location] store." He was like "Oh? Who's that?" And I told him and he was like "Oh!" and laughed (the manager of that kiosk, who was just a few feet away, used to work with hubby so he knows me, as do the rest of the store managers in town). I asked how they had been doing and he said it was pretty busy. I went off to work my 3rd shift and snacked on some of the food that had been brought in for us to munch on in the backroom before I clocked in (I had like 15 minutes to kill).

It was an easy shift - I was on register for half of it, which again, I was fine when it came to normal transactions but needed help with returns and giftcard purchases as I haven't done those enough to get the process down on my own yet (I feel more comfortable for now having some walk me through it or at least watch as I do it to make sure I don't forget something). I also had someone sign up for a Place Card (the charge card for The Children's Place) so I got to see how that process goes. The rest of my shift was spent putting stuff away in the newborn area and straightening up other areas. I was scheduled til close (which was 10-11pm) but they let me go at about 930pm as we had no transactions after 9pm and we were overstaffed.

Today was a fun day at work though. I went in at noon and got to be the greeter at the door, passing out our upcoming holiday shopping pass (which is a reusable coupon where you scratch off the box to see what percent off you get and you can use it in store and online as many times as you want during the valid time period, which these were for Dec 9-24). I was also directing people to the tables at the front where we had $5 fleece tops and pants for both boys and girls. I helped a few customers who were looking for items as well and checked bags that set off the store alarm. It was a pretty easy job, kinda fun and during the downtime I straightened up the fleece tables and some of the other racks near the front there. We also realized that people weren't paying attention when I handed them the holiday shopping passes and said it didn't start until the 9th as I guess they were trying to use them at the checkout, claiming I didn't say that (even though it also says it on the card, and everyone that worked there heard me say it, lol...) they did however hear me say $5 fleece as the fleece was going fast and people would flock the tables after I mentioned they were all $5! The sale on them started Wednesday and by the time I left today what we had out was all we had left - we were down to 1 color in the boys tops and the girls had no size XL left! It was a pretty easy shift, although it went by kinda slow. My feet were killing me by the end of it too, having been on my feet for long stretches of time 2 days in a row. I spent my break in the backroom munching on a granola bar and chitchatted with one of the managers who was finishing up her break too, so that was kinda nice.

Hubby thinks I need to start carrying a card with all my pregnancy info on it that I can just hand out to people, as between employees and customers I keep getting asked the same questions on a daily basis when I work ("How far along are you?" "Is this your first?" "What are you having?" "Have you decided on a name?" "What is it?" "Oh that's pretty/neat/different/etc." One girl asked if I was married and then, surprised, asked how old I was which surprised her even more as she didn't think I looked 26 at all - she thought I was a lot younger! lol...). I don't mind it too much, but I think it is pretty amusing!

Our new Westinghouse 40" LCD HDTV that we got at Target for $298 during Black Friday opening madness. Yeah, we have a bit of clutter going on there too... there's my new laptop on the coffee table in front, as well as our entertainment setup, various gaming items and a pile of stuff for Jay.

Tonight when I got home I sorta helped hubby take out our busted TV to the dumpster (ie: I held the doors open for him and carried the smaller stuff out like the remote and power cord) and we (ie: him) put together our new TV. The thing is, we don't subscribe to the HD channels as it's more money, so we noticed flipping channels that some shows on it kinda look like crap as it's an HDTV. Oh well!

We warmed up some leftovers for dinner and then sat down to watch the terrible, terrible movie ThanksKilling on Netflix's Instant Watch on our new TV. We've been hearing about this movie for over a month now, as several friends on Facebook have posted about it and when we visited my college roomie down in Texas, she showed us the first 5 minutes of it (as that was all she could get through, it was that bad). The premise is 5 college students are traveling home together for Thanksgiving break when they encounter a talking psychotic demon turkey who was necromanced by a powerful Indian back in "the olden days" to kill all white men for what they did to the Indians. It's a low budget indie film and the acting in it is horrible, as is the plot - at one point, the turkey, after killing this one girl's sheriff father, disguises himself as her dad and when they go to her house none of them seem to notice that her father is a 3 foot turkey! lol... The talking psychotic demon turkey did have some pretty funny 1-liners though, but that was about it. Thank God it was only just over an hour long, as we could feel our brains melting at how bad this one was (which we knew going into it it was going to bad, but still...)

And that's been our busy weekend thus far.

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to call-in at work and see if they need me (which considering how things were today and Friday evening, I doubt they will) and then hubby and I are stopping out at Best Buy to recycle his broken monitors, pick up a few things at Walmart, move some things to storage and pull out the Christmas decorations so we can put up the tree and decorate a bit around here - I'm looking forward to that!