Saturday, November 26, 2011

Favorite Things {Black} Friday :: Shopping Finkbeiner Family Style

I hope everyone had a blessed Thanksgiving!  We had a very nice day and will continue to celebrate the rest of the weekend with family :-)

This week I'm linking up with Jenny from The Sippy Cup Chronicles for the Favorite Thing Friday Blog Hop.

SippyCupChroniclesFavoriteThingFriday


Like many brave souls out there, I went shopping today.  Thankfully, I didn't have to go alone (I hate being alone) and was accompanied by my mom, aunt and three cousins.  In years past, we had a very strategic plan detailed with items at each store and the time that the stores actually opened.  This year was different, since the majority of the stores we wanted to visit opened at Midnight.  So we made a plan, unsure of how long each stop would take since the lines would be unpredictable because we wouldn't be getting in line right away.  I went to bed at 9:15 last night with the alarm set for 11:00.  I woke up to the alarm began the process of getting dressed when Ryan came in to tell me that it was actually 11:35!  Shear panic set in, I had to pick up my two cousins before going to my mom's house to get her - this will all take 20 minutes under normal conditions.  That doesn't leave us much time to get in line at Target!  My cousins agree to meet me at my mom's to save a few minutes and we all pile into my mom's running vehicle and begin our journey to Target.  We get in line about a 1/8 mile away from the doors.  Midnight hits and we make the trek into the store. We got everything on our list and make it out in just under an hour!

Kristin stretching before we get to the doors

Then we went to Kohls where we again got everything on our list (and then some) and waited in line for 1.5 hours.  After Kohls we had some very strategic packing to do to make everything fit into my mom's vehicle.

In line about 45 minutes away from the checkout

Lindsay had to hold the stuff while we were moving the car so it didn't fall out until we could re-pack!

Love these girls!! Jenny (cousin), Lindsay (cousin), Sue (mom), Kristin (cousin),  Jane (aunt)

And the door shuts - success!

At this point it was about 3:30, and we were quickly losing spunk. Since none of the other stores that we were going to opened until 4:00 so we decided a pit stop for breakfast was in order.  We went to Ihop since our options were very limited.  We had  horrible service in general (it took almost 15 minutes to just get our waters), but the food was good.  It also gave us the opportunity to further plan our next stops.  We had a plan in hand as we ventured out.  However at this point, we were very tired and our enthusiasm for shopping had severely dwindled.  We made very quick stops for the gift essentials at Meijer and Sears before heading back to my mom's house to divide up our purchases.  Our Black Friday was a very successful day of shopping, hanging with some awesome ladies and lots of making friends in line!  I would expect nothing less from these gals :)

The backseat <3

We already can't wait for next year!!



8 comments:

  1. Love my family and love Black Friday Shopping!!!

    ~Jenny

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  2. Oh my goodness. You are brave. Looks like so much fun!!!

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  3. Wow, ours was not organized at all! lol Sounds like you gals had a blast! I'm still trying to catch up on sleep after that night! :-)

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  4. Oops, that was Me---Jen Hopkins haha

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  5. that looks like so much fun! i didn't take part this year...soooo soo tired from not sleeping the night before. ha.

    cheers.

    don't miss my custom u/s painting giveaway. it's a good one!! :)

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  6. Love this post. Looks like so much fun! :) I usually go to Toys R Us, Target, and Kohls every year. This year I just went to Toys R Us, Target, and walmart... which was a mistake. lol. Walmart will not be in my BF future anytime soon, haha. Its CRAZY in there. haha. Glad you guys got everything you wanted. I looove Black Friday! :)

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  7. wow!! I wanted to do black Friday, but with being out of state we wondered if the money to ship it all back would out weigh the discount savings so I'm going to hit cyber Monday instead.

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  8. It sounds like you planned it out perfectly.

    I could not do that, it would stress me out waiting in line that long.

    Following you back.

    Regina
    www.thecrazynutsmom.com

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