Plenty to be THANKful for, Day 10

Day 10: Black Friday!

I wasn't planning on going out this year. 

Unlike last year, there wasn't really anything we needed to rush out, stand in the line for hours (although it was in the 40s this year unlike the freezing 'teens last year and I wasn't almost 8 months pregnant this year...), and fight the crowds for.

I had been on Amazon quite a bit and had several wish lists set up - one for what we're getting family, another for Jay, etc - and figured I'd just log-on sometime after midnight and order everything since I had giftcards. 

As I went to click "checkout" though, it informed me that one of the items in our cart - the Leapster My Own Leaptop that we were getting Jay - had sold out and wouldn't be available til next week. This was something we felt we needed to get him as he's constantly trying to "play" with our laptops whenever they're out and figured he'd grow with this one for a bit too before needing an upgrade. 

The online Target price was a steal (if you don't factor in shipping) so I debated for several minutes and decided to head out into the madness to see how much it was in store, since I also had several Target giftcards too.

I got there about 1245am - 45 minutes after they opened - and found a semi-close parking spot in the parking lot of the grocery store just across the way. I grabbed one of the last 2 shopping baskets (they were out of carts!) and navigated the crowds to get to the toy department (when we would go to concerts in college, my ex and his friends LOVED my ability to navigate a crowd to get us up close - guess that comes in handy on Black Friday!). The in-store price was the same as Amazon's sale price so I grabbed it. I also grabbed the Rockin' Elmo guitar that my sister-in-law requested we get one of our nephews, this Sesame Street 2 figure pack with Super Grover and Murray that apparently is kinda rare (I was kicking myself earlier for not buying it when I was there last week, as I could not find it online at all and really wanted to get it for Jay for a stocking stuffer) as well as some stuff for my little cousin's Christmas present. 

After spending several minutes trying to find the end of one of the check-out lines I spent the next 45 minutes waiting in the line to check-out. I had my phone, and 4G (since the 3G was acting up) and ordered the bulk of my Christmas shopping via the Amazon shopping app - multi-tasking for the win!

(After giftcards, I spent $12 total at Target and $4 on Amazon).

This put us at 145am.

I figured, since I was up and already out, might as well stop out at the mall and work to see about something else we're including in my cousin's present. And since our sale today was that the entire store was 30% off (plus my 25% off employee discount) til 2pm (which was extended til the end of the day) I figured I'd grab Jay some more graphic tees for like $3 each since he had a growth spurt this last week and all his 6-9month graphic tees are now too short. I got out there around 2am, saw 3 accidents all within a 1/4 mile of each other, and yeah... the mall was insane! (Although I did oddly enough park in my usual close spot!). It was as packed as it normally is on a Friday night! And work... wow! The store was completely trashed and the check out line was all along the outer aisles and back of the store! We were short-staffed and completely in surprise at how busy it turned out to be (the majority of stores in the mall didn't open til 4am - only some near Macy's and Bergners opened at midnight).

I got 2 accessories for my cousin, 3 tees for Jay, a sweater for him that I had my eye on and missed when it was 40% off (my manager at the time said it would eventually go to 50%!), and 3 pairs of socks for $35.

My mom, aunt and cousin were still out at the mall when I got done shopping at work around 245am so I met up with them in Macy's and hung out with them for a bit. It was around 4am when we left the mall.

I was all set to go to bed... when I decided I wanted some Jingle Jammies from Old Navy.

I mean, why not? They're on sale, it was on my way home anyway and I have the Old Navy card so I can just pay it off as soon as I get my paycheck and not have to worry about interest... plus I get an extra 10% off.

So I got 2 pairs of the Jingle Jammies, a $5 thermal green striped shirt for Jay to wear with overalls, and a fleece scarf for $1 for a total of $25.

I got home right around 5am and passed out a little after 6am.

Jay woke me up around 1130am, we watched Curious George 2: Follow That Monkey on PBS among other things since they were doing a Curious George movie marathon all day today and after getting ready, we headed out around 2pm since I had to be at work at 3 and anticipated craziness with traffic and everything else.

We stopped McDonald's so I could get my $1 large Coke with no ice to get me through my shift and to my amazement the drive-thru was completely empty! 

Next we stopped by our local post office branch to pick-up a package we missed the other day - it had Jay's Super Why DVD in it as well as his stuffed Chica plush (from the Sunny Side Up Show on Sprout) that I ordered for him for Christmas (those things sold out within the 1st 24 hours they were on sale!).

Those 2 errands took us 20 minutes - I was expecting it to take MUCH longer!

So I dropped him off at my mom's and headed into work... 

The store was pretty trashed, but you could tell they had cleaned up a little since when I was there at 2am. I was assigned to stock and recover the back-half of the store, where newborn, baby boy and baby girl are all located. I kept up on baby boy and completely restocked newborn making it look awesome, so those weren't too bad at the end of the night... baby girl though... I didn't really get to touch it until the last hour or so we were open. I ended up taking down the entire wall of jeans and just redoing it all, they were soooo messy (I did it earlier in the day with the baby boy jeans too). 

I had one lady give me attitude too over the fact that she couldn't use her 20% off coupon on top of the 30% off she was getting for Black Friday, despite her coupon saying that it's excluded during sale events (all coupons are - only exceptions are employee and old/new Placecard holder discounts). She was like "Well 30% isn't much - it's still like a $40 coat!" Well sorry lady, you should have come in several weeks ago when all the coats were 40% off and you could have also used a coupon on top of that! I'm not corporate, I don't make the rules - I just find your stuff and ring them up. I didn't say that, but I wanted to!

The graphic tee tables were an explosion of shirts and took us forever to put them back together. We also had to take down all the Entire Store 30% off signs and clean the floors (normally I can Swiffer the floors with 2 pads, tonight it took me 6!). We closed the store at 10pm - we didn't clock out til almost 1215am!

Lots o' money though! Can't wait for my paycheck next Friday - it's gonna be a nice one!

And now, I'm typing when I should be asleep in bed as I get to work 12-5pm today.

Jay is having a sleepover at Grammie's - hubby and I both have to be at work tomorrow and we knew were going to be worn out from Black Friday so my mom said he could stay over there for the night so we could get a solid night's sleep without having to worry about him waking us up in the middle of the night for anything or waking us up super early! We both admit though, it feels a bit weird without him here!