Looking Through Pictures and Laughing at My Craziness

Do you know what these pictures are of? None other than the one day of the year that I lose any little bit of sense I have left... Black Friday!

I know it's a bit early, or a tad late depending on how you look at it, but I was just looking through some old pictures and found these. I took these the day after Thanksgiving just to show Honey how crazy some people really are! Imagine! People actually getting up when they could be getting some perfectly good sleep just to go fight other crazy people and spend too much money. Doesn't make much sense to me.

Of course I'm kidding. I wouldn't have the pictures if I wasn't crazy enough to be there, now would I? It's something that my mom said we should do one Thanksgiving while sitting around rubbing our over-stuffed bellies. "What?!", said I! Was this woman CRAZY? But obviously we both were because there we were the very next morning at 4:30 a.m. Neither of us can pass up a good deal.

And that's how the tradition got started. Even one year when I didn't have any money to spend, I still got up and met mom just because it's tradition. And now my oldest daughter has joined us and she's just as crazy as we are! We have some pretty funny stories we can tell about this day. Like promising we are going to be the 'better person' and not push or say unkind things, and then biting our tounge because someone swooped around us on the left, in a parking lot isle, and stole our parking spot before we could pull in. Whoo honey, that one really tested my religion. LOL! Instantly the scene from Fried Green Tomatoes popped into my head.

The one thing that has made it even more exciting for us is planning our strategy. For a couple of weeks before Black Friday we sit and plan what places have the best deals and where we're going to be first, second, etc. We plan who's going to be in different parts of the stores so we can grab the best deals. It's crazy fun!

The one thing that has helped us plan more than anything is subscribing to Black Friday websites that somehow get store's Black Friday ads before they're released to the public. We could look at them on the website and we also signed up to receive email notifications any time a new store ad was available. I LOVE it! Isn't that terrible? I feel like such a bad girl, peeking at those ads before anyone else. LOL! Think I'll make Santa's naughty list for that?

Since we're a small town without a lot of big stores, we always start at Wal-Mart since we can wait INSIDE in the warmth instead of standing outside of K-Mart and freezing out patooties off! This past Christmas we were able to purchase 7" digital photo frames, a portable DVD player, and lots of DVD's for such awesome deals, and we had everything planned out a week before Black Friday! It was SO much fun, well, except for the getting up at 4 a.m. part. This year I think I might just stay in my warm jammies and shop for all those deals on-line. I won't mind getting up at 4:58 and plopping down here in my chair and getting the same amazing deals I'd get if I'd been up for an hour and began fighting crowds so tight you can't turn around without taking someone out.

So there you have it. My extremely early, or very late, tip for doing your Christmas shopping. Get the Black Friday ads early and go crazy!