thanksgiving & black friday

Where to begin....
Thanksgiving is always a holiday that I love (not near as much as Christmas, but I do love it quite a bit). This year was nothing shy of a great Thanksgiving thanks to my great family and Jason and his lovely family!
Jason and I headed to Osceola on Wednesday night to prepare for Thanksgiving in Des Moines on Thursday. And of course we had to stop at Scratch on our way there.

I got the Caramel Crunch cupcake - or something like that. Delish!

And when we woke up it was Thanksgiving day and the newspaper ads were abundant. Not only did I eat a lot of turkey, mashed potatoes and pie on Thanksgiving but I also avoided taking a nap ALL DAY. That's a victory in itself.
So after eating a lot of food, it was time for Jason and I to head to the stores for BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING. Geesh. This was something I had never done before simply because I've always just thought it's easier/less stressful/more relaxed to just buy things before or after Black Friday and pay more.
Well I decided to cave this year and see what the madness was all about. With that said, Jason and I made our way to the Walmart in West Des Moines (along with everyone else). Thankfully neither of us were in the hunt for big ticket items like TVs and gun safes (which were actually a big item at Wally-world this year). Jason did get a new video game though that he's pretty excited about!

I think Walmart had plenty of tupperware for everyone to take 10.

We got to Walmart at 5:30 and the sales started at 6. We were out of there by 6:30. I must say I was VERY impressed with Walmart's ability to keep the checkout process quick and efficient.

Saw this at the register in Walmart and about threw up all over the floor. Ew.

After Walmart, we weren't sure where to go... the next stores we wanted to go to didn't open until 8. Blah. So we went to Best Buy simply because they opened at 6. We walked around and browsed. Ooh'd and Aah'd at the cheap movies but had no desire to wait in their slow, hardly-moving line. We then went out to the car and sat for a bit when we realized the huge line forming outside of Old Navy.

You heard right. Hundreds of people were waiting to get into Old Navy...... of all stores.

I thought this was weird and did a little Google search to find out that the first 500 in each store have a chance to win $1,000,000.

Well heck, Jason and I had nothing else to do so we got out of the car and walked to Old Navy. Turns out we didn't win the million, but at least we tried.

By this time it was 7:30 or so and we headed to Jordan Creek. This was lovely because we could wait INSIDE the mall, in the warmth, for the stores to open.

Waiting for the mall stores to open!

Let me just say that the ladies were going NUTS over the boots in Younkers. If I had been in the hunt for boots (which thankfully I'm not), I would've had to push and shove my way through. And if you know me, I usually have no problem doing that! ;)

I pondered over getting a picture for the living room and then I thought about picking up one of the memory foam pillows. Walked out with nothing.

It was time for Target. I love Target and I loved Target on Black Friday. By the time we got there it was 8:45 so I think most of the madness (if there was any) was pretty well over. We picked up some $5 board games, a couple $2 placemats and Jason got a few other things. Once again, the line was so quick and efficient! We weaved in and out of the grocery aisles before we could go check out and the line went super quick.

Now, it was time for us to head to Kohl's. HOLY MACARONI. Kohl's was nuts and a mess. All I wanted at Kohl's was their deal of 10 pictures frames for $15. That's it. Everyone else had piles of clothes, sheets, comforters, kitchen tools, pillows, blankets, rugs and so much more. Jason and I got in line, which was wrapped all the way around the outside aisles of the store and moved maybe 20 steps in 30 minutes. Then this little sales associate comes walking around saying, "If you sign up for a Kohl's credit card today you can go to the front of the line"....... hmmmmm. Interesting. So I gave Jason the look like, should we? We decided to wait a bit. After about 10 more minutes I said screw it and went to get that credit card. It was nice that I got an extra 35% off my already 50% off purchase. For people who spent over a couple hundred dollars, which was a lot, I think I definitely would've done that. Needless to say, I'm now a Kohl's charge owner. Great.

It was now time for a two hour drive to Tanger Outlets in Williamsburg. Long drive. Pitch dark. I slept for about 30 minutes while Jason listened to sports talk radio. Sums up our car rides. Tanger was much busier than I thought it'd be! We headed to Gap before going to Nike. Nike's employees were either all on crack or just very excited to be there. They were dancing in window sills to the live DJ that they hired to bring in strobe lights. It was a party. I got two pairs of Nike sweats for $20 - and one pair is hot pink!

It was now time to head home. This time, to Walford.

We got back at 2am and went straight to bed. Got up around 9am the next day and went into Cedar Rapids to hit up Walmart, Target, JCPenney, Younkers and Kohl's. Got a few more things.

Last night was my family's Thanksgiving and we were all rocking our elastic waistband sweatpants. Just one reason I love this family. We played games and then ate and drank lots of food/beer/wine.

When you don't have a coozie to fit a tall boy, put ice in a container! Haha!

Today is a relaxing day filled with college football. On that note, the Michigan/OSU game is nuts. Go blue! Mom and I put up the Christmas tree and Christmas decorations this morning and I have my pile of Christmas stuff to take back to Davenport tomorrow.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving and got to spend it with those you are thankful for. Can't wait for Santa to be here!