wow, 10 whole days!

I haven't gone that long without blogging in a really long time!! I still have more to catch up on and pictures to post, but not tonight. This whole last week has been so full and busy. Last weekend was all about the play. Then we jumped right to Thanksgiving. We celebrate with Glade's family on the night before Thanksgiving. I spent that day making pies and rolls for the next day's dinner with just our family. Then we went to the Inner Stake Center for dinner with all of the Smiths. The kids love that so much. A whole gym to run and play and spend time with cousins.

Thanksgiving morning we all woke up early and headed to the Turkey Trot. That's a whole nother post. After, we came home, got all the food cooking and got shower and changed. We were all starving so we decided not to wait for the turkey, but just have ham for lunch. Then later, when the turkey was done, we ate that with all the left overs. After lunch we all laid down for a short nap. Normally we head to the movies with friends, but I just didn't have the energy and everyone was still sleeping when we would have needed to leave. Instead, we just hung out, had dessert and planned out Black Friday.

Here's where it gets good. Toys R Us and Wal Mart through a kink into the plans by opening at night instead of early in the morning. My boys really wanted to participate, so they volunteered to go sit in line at Toys R Us. They showed up and 7:30 pm with lawn chairs and dvd players to wait it out. Unfortunately they were stuck in between foul mouthed smokers, but they toughed it out. Just before 10pm, mom came back to do the shopping. By then, the line was twice around the building. They didn't get in till 10:45 and not out until 12:15. Crazy. They got everything we needed and were home by 1am. Then the greatest mom in the world was back up and out by 4 am to grab stuff from Kmart for me.

In the meantime, I was up at 2:30 and was headed to Kohls, which opened at 3am. I decided to check something online and realized I could order lots of what I needed online instead of going to all the stores. I ordered my stuff from Wal Mart and even got free shipping. Nice. I texted the girls to stay in bed, I didn't need them anymore. They didn't complain about that. I ran to WalMart, where the crowd had thinned and found that most of the pallets of stuff I still wanted were empty. Fortunately, they had about 6 carts of go-backs. I found everything I wanted in the carts! Went straight to the check out that was completely empty and was out of there in no time flat. Off to Kohl's!

Kohl's was a joke. Got the three things I wanted and got in the line that started at the front of the store, snaked back to the back and around to the side and back up front. I waited about 15 min and decided I was not missing out on the Target sales for this. I took my goods and stuffed them under a rack of men's suit pants and hoped they were there when I came back. Off to Target!

Target was a zoo. I was smart enough to not use a cart so I squirmed through the masses of grid locked carts and got what I needed. I wasn't rude, but definitely aggressive. Back to Kohl's!

My stuff was still at Kohl's so I got back in the exact same end of the line spot I was in before. After half an hour, a lady said if we filled out a form for a credit card, we could go straight to the front of the line, SOLD! Not only did I get to check out right away, but I also got 20% off everything I bought that day. That made my very cute boots free!! I met mom back at Kmart, checked out there and went to meet Tracie for breakfast. The three of us refueled and headed back to Target, WalMart and Kohls for the less important things. We were done by 11 am. Eight solid hours! I have only a few little things left, but other than that, I'm done!!

Saturday we took the kids to see Tangled, which was really good and that night went to see Brooklyn and Glade sing in the Stake Choir Concert. I was very ready for my Sunday day of rest! Did I mention that Chelsey was here for all of that? She and Whitley and I did a little shopping Saturday morning and had lunch together, which was nice for a little girl time. We got the trees put up at some point and lots of the rest put out, but now the house is a wreck. I definitely need the week to start and get things all back to normal. I love my family and feel so blessed for all the great things in my life!