Black Friday

I was just wondering, does anyone know why they call the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday? I've never known and was just curious. Anyway, S and I decided that we were going to take part in that this year. Normally we only take part in the day after Christmas sales, but there were some really good ads this year that we just couldn't ignore! ;) We got up at about 4am this morning and went straight to Walmart to purchase a few items. Let me tell you, I found out that Walmart allows people to come in the store as early as midnight, but they don't allow anyone to purchase the sale items (from the ad) until 5am. One of the ladies watching the sale pallets said that people were there later this year and didn't start showing up to stand in line until a little before 3am. Personally, that is crazy! It was crazy enough getting up as early as I did and having to stand in line for 25 minutes. ;) Anyway, S went to the electronics department (which was apparently a mad house) and I went to the garden center to get an artificial tree for the family that we have adopted this year. S said when they allowed everyone to get what they wanted it was just crazy with people pushing and shoving and picking up multiples of the same items! My area wasn't as crazy, but mainly the people that were there weren't for tree or anything dealing with Christmas decorations. They were all there for either the Jeep 4x4 or the Barbie beetle. Once they said okay in my area, these huge boxes, that were stacked quite high on pallets, were just falling into peoples arms all over the place. I tell you, I'm glad that I wasn't one of the people that wanted one of those things! Over all, we actually were able to get out of Walmart in 30 minutes! That is extremely impressive being as that on a normal day of the year, it take just that long to get through the lines! :)

The next store we decided to go to was Target b/c they opened at 6am. When we got there, though, the line was wrapped around the building and we weren't really sure what we wanted to get there anyway, so we decided to go. We decided to go home and take the car seats out and put the seat down so we could go to Circuit City. We had bought a new TV over the Internet last night and we knew it would be there today, so we thought we would see if there was anything there that we would like to have or needed. ;) We got in there pretty easily, and got the items that we were interested in fairly quickly. Trying to pay for them was an entirely different story. It took us over 1 1/2 hours of standing in line before we were finally able to check out and go home! Frankly, that is just too long, and I don't care if it was a busy shopping day or not. That was ridiculous!!!! You know what I mean?

After that, S dropped my off at my MIL's house and we spent the rest of the morning, and into the afternoon, shopping at the mall! It was a good time spent with her as we don't get that many "just us" girl days, and I got some more great shopping deals (for me and others)! ;) My MIL and I had some great conversations and just had fun hanging out, so I really enjoyed the rest of my day. Who can complain about that? ;)

So, overall it was a great day. I wish S and I didn't have to stand in line that long, but that is the way things go sometimes. I'm not sure if I would get up that early again next year, but I probably will still go out and try to get some of the deals that are out there. I'm just soo tired now from waking up early to being on my feet all day that I'm not sure I want to go through that unless it's really worth it! ;)