Black Friday

Yes....I did it, and I survived.

I have actually never been shopping earlier or for longer, in my entire life. But I do have to say it was one of the funnest and most interesting things that I have ever done. Lori and her girls go and do the early morning shopping every year. They invited Whitney and I to come along for the ride. Natalie was invited as well, but she was sleep deprived already.

We began the hunt at 2:00 a.m., yes...you heard me, and it is not a typo. I went to bed at 11:00 p.m. and got a mere 3 hours of sleep. It wasn't as hard to wake up as I thought, maybe it was the excitement of it all. Our first destination was the Springville Walmart. We arrived at three and began searching the store for the items we desired most. For those of you who have never been, at Walmart they fill the isles with all of the "sale" items, such as big screen t.v.'s, DVD players, and Barbi Jeeps. We each had our own item we were responsible to grab, Lacie was down the isle from us ready to grab a Leapster, Lori was at the portable DVD players, and Whitney and I were going for the Barbi cars. It was really interesting to see how people acted. We were right next the Barbi jeeps, which there were only 9 of, and there was a lady there that had been waiting since 10:00 p.m. the night before. CRAZ-EE. As the minutes crept closer and closer to 5:00 a.m., the announcers on the intercom kept on getting more and more anxious. It was very hard to make out what she was saying because she talked so fast and so loud, but it sounded something like, THE SALE DOES NOT START TIL 5:00 A.M., DO NOT TOUCH ANY OF THE PALLETS!

The store employees also kept on walking up and down the isle very anxiously trying to get everyone to clear the way. Lacie even told us there was an employee who kept on hitting everyone's bums, and telling them to get out of the way....yeah.....GROSS. It was about 6 minutes to 5:00, when there was a giant ROAR, and next thing I knew everyone was diving for the toys left and right, it was much like ants on a piece of half-eaten candy. It was nuts! So as soon as Whitney and I could figure out what was happening, we dived in as well, and got the Barbie cars, unscathed. Then we tried to maneuver our way out as quickly as possible. We may have ran a few people over on the way, but we were fourth or fifth in line at the speedy checkout. Yeah, we were awesome!

After we checked out, Whitney and I waited patiently by customer service for the rest of the group. The excitement was not over then. Soon we saw the paramedics heading our way and into customer service, where there was a man with a broken arm! We assume that either something fell on him, or he was trampled. But they had to cart him away in a wheelchair. Come to find out, there were two more people, who had to be taken away by ambulance, because they were trampled! Whitney and I escaped unscathed, but someone did scratch Lacie pretty good as she was diving for the Leapsters.

The rest of our trip was very mild compared to the Walmart experience. Everyone acted a bit more civilized as time went on. All in all, even though I had to wake up BEFORE the butt-crack of dawn, it was worth it, mostly just to see how crazy people in this world can be. Lori, Lacie, Lyndsie, and the rest of the gang were troopers, and I have to give them a lot of credit for that. Because Whitney and I shopped around for about the first ten minutes, and then dove for the first bench we could find at every store. We almost fell asleep on the couch at the mall. I'm not sure how they do it! I was a zombie. We ended up shopping for a total of 14 hours straight.

In other news, Thanksgiving was great! For the most part......We had Thanksgiving at my Aunt Andrea's house this year, so Robby decided that he and Cody would go riding before the feast began. As I drove up to my Aunts house, I got a phone call from Robby. It was Cody at first, but the message was, Robby needs a new bike.....OH NO. Come to find out Robby must have hit a really big rock, or something of that nature, and cracked the casing on the engine in four different places. As a result, all of the oil bled out of the bike. Robby was fine, the bike however, was not. We will hopefully find out on Monday what the damage will be.

The food was great, and after we ate at my Aunt's, we headed up to see my mom. They were just barely getting ready to eat as we arrived. So really got to stuff our faces! It was really good to see all of our family, and to spend some time with them.