Black Friday '08

This year I decided I was going to brave the crowds and join in the fun of shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Not sure if I am brave or crazy, the jury is still out. I looked thru all the sales fliers, made a plan and went to bed early so I could get up at 3:30am and begin.

Kobe was so excited about the idea of getting up while it was still 'night' and going shopping, that he was begging to come with me. What a boy! So of course I wasn't going to turn down a shopping partner!

This is the note he taped to the outside of his door when he went to sleep...

It says : "Wake me up to go to the store Mommy! 4:00am. Wake me up to go to the store Mommy.! 4:00AM." That gave us a good laugh. He was so serious about going.

So we left the house about 3:45am and begun our trek! It was such a fun morning together. And we got so many awesome deals and saved soooo much money! The deals are just unbelievable. I got almost all my Christmas shopping done that morning...incredible! The Kobester was so fun to have along.

My theory on shopping on Black Friday is that if you are going to go, you just have to go with a fun attitude, expect to stand in long lines and be surrounded by 1 million people. If you go expecting all that, it reallly isn't that bad. And we didn't encounter any angry people or people fighting over the same thing or any of the other crazy things the news always reports on. People were nice and just laughed about the craziness of it all while we stood in lines. :)

The quote of the day would have to go to a dear man who was probably in his mid-fifities. We were in K-mart and to say it was a zoo is putting it mildly. Literally you couldn't walk, everything came to a stand still and you just had to wait to get into the toy department. He was dressed in cowboy boots and a flannel shirt and he just looked around shaking his head and said, "I gave up sitting in a tree stand hunting for all this." Me and Kobe laughed so hard at that. It was hilar!

Here is Kobe at 7am....looking alive!

Here is Kobe at 10am.....still holding strong after being up for 7 hrs already.

At 10:30 we ran back to the house to 'unload' our purchases and pick up the rest of the family. And we ALL headed out for round #2! We ended up shopping until 4pm.

Here is Kobe around 3:30p....starting to look a bit tired out, but still not bad!


After 12.5 hours of shopping and being out, we all headed home and crashed on the couch and watched a Christmas movie. Needless to say we were all completely out by 9pm that night. :)


It was such a fun day. And I loved how Kobe was so into it. His wife is going to love it if he stays this way when he gets older! :)