Black Friday 2011-part 4

And wrapping up our final post regarding Black Friday! Finally!

I'm sorry if I have bored most of you.

I knew the post would be entirely too long if I mushed it all into one.

Plus, I am low on this week's posts due to my camera mishap. 

But next week..

It is on to the Christmas mayhem.

After my very short trip into Meijer we headed across the street to Menards.

This is where my claws were willing to come out. I was threatening to fight for the gifts I needed here.

I had to wait in line because Menards didn't open until 6am. There was already about 50 people standing in line so I didn't want to risk not getting what I wanted. I left the warmth of the car and headed out in my brother's coat to stand next to the crazy people like myself. Joseph ended up heading to my house to get more milk for babygirl, who decided it was morning and she was ready to go. He ended up at Target and found some good stuff there. Around 5am I guess it was pretty easy to get in and out. He didn't even have a wait at the register.

Meanwhile, I was huddling with complete strangers. We chatted about Thanksgiving, dinner, family and what we were standing in line for. I was lucky enough to be in front of these two older women. They were sweet and even offered to help me carry the items I wanted. I politely declined after we were handed maps with the location of the items from the ad. I lucked out and both things that I wanted were located in the same stack. 

Babygirl has been carrying her largest stuffed animals into the living room and attempting to sit on them. 

The poor girl is just dying for a chair that is her size.

I figured the table and chair set would suit her just fine and it was the cheapest one I found in all the store ads. This one came with a tea set that I thought would go along with her kitchen set well.

Now the train table..

I think hubby and I are just as excited as each other for babygirl to have it.

She played with one at my sister's house and also whenever we go to the mall we stop by Barnes and Noble for her to play with the one there. Ever since converting the back room into a play room for her, we have wanted a few larger toys to fill the space and keep things contained back there.

Shopping at Menards was just as easy as all of the other stores we stopped at.

When 6am hit there was only a small fight for a cart and I was off to the back of the store for my gifts. That darn train table was heavy! I'd say at least 30-40 pounds. I struggled a bit getting it into my cart and even knocked a few things off a random shelf. Oops! It uh.. must've been that guy behind me. At the other end of the pile was the tea set tables. Those were lighter than air. I tossed one in to the cart and half-ran to the check out. I was the first one up there and out the door in less than 10 minutes. 

We finally got home at 6:21am and the 3 of us were off to bed. Babygirl went to her crib without a fuss. She layed down and let Joe and I sleep until 11am! It was heaven. Hubby got home from work around 1:30pm and kept babygirl so Joe and I could head to the mall. The later on in the afternoon when we went wasn't even busy! It seemed like a normal weekend at the mall. He finished up the last of his gifts and we came back to my house to attempt to have Christmas puke in my living room.

If you made it through all of the Black Friday posts, leave me a comment and let me know if I bored you to death! Were you ready to poke your eyes out? Or do you have stories of your own to share?

Also, here are some clips of our shopping experience.
My brother is a self-proclaimed youtube sensation =)

Black Friday 2011-part 3

Since Target was insanely busy and I had nothing that I was dying to get there, we headed over to Kohl's. 

Joseph had a few things he wanted from Target but he wasn't looking forward to the lines either. Plus he wanted to shop for himself at Kohl's. What's Black Friday without picking up a few things for yourself? =)

Kohl's opened their doors at midnight and I figured it would have been crazy when we got their at 12:15. It wasn't that bad actually. There were hardly any people in line but there were a lot of shoppers. I had half a mind of staying by the registers to cut down on the wait time. I was actually shopping on a time crunch. I had to be back at home by 3:15am at the very latest in order for my hubby to head to work. 

Joseph and I both had things we wanted to look at, so waiting wasn't a great option at that point. All Fisher Price toys were 50% off. I wasn't really looking for anything extra for babygirl but I saw this one toy that she is obsessed with. My niece has this toy and babygirl carries it around her house anytime we visit. 

She loves this thing!

s/n: 

Being a parent, you have to decide what toy will be the most exciting and make your child lose all focus. This is the toy you must save for last. However, I have way too many exciting toys this year that I probably won't be able to pick which should be last. Opening gifts may be an all day thing. She will probably get through one gift an hour! 

With the microphone being half-off, there was no way I could pass it up. I reminded my husband when I got home that of course it had an off switch. Man that toy is loud! 

Joseph macked out at Kohl's. He went nuts in there. He just about knocked out everyone on his list to buy for. Once we got in line, it was insanely long. At this point I was kicking myself for not hanging around earlier. The line was wrapped all the way around the store, weaving in and out of aisles. How convenient it was that the line wrapped around all of the best sale items. I seriously lost count of all the things my brother kept picking up and adding to his ever growing pile. I had the brilliant idea of grabbing a big memory foam box to act as our shopping cart. We just scooted it along our line and dumped it off when we got close to the register. It took an hour and fifteen minutes to get up to the register. At this point, I was panicking slightly due to the time crunch and thinking I wasn't going to make it home in time for hubby to be off to work. But we made it out of there with minutes to spare. My brother spent around $200 and the savings was almost $500. I love receipts that show you what the discounts were and how much you saved. He also walked away with $60 in Kohl's cash. 

Whenever we say we saved money my dad always says, "yes, but you SPENT $    "  haha. 

We hung out at my house from 3am to 3:45 in order to let babygirl sleep as much as possible.
Yes, I had to be one of THOSE moms that took her kid out shopping at ungodly hours. It was only because there was no one to sit with her at home while she slept! I knew she would sleep in the car and I planned on leaving her in her car with my brother while I ran into the stores alone. 

Meijer's sales started at 4am. I literally walked right in and found the toy I wanted. No rush, no madness like at WalMart. I found the kitchen set that I wanted and headed straight for the checout. Meijer had their self-scan lanes open for people with a small number of purchases. I got right in line behind one guy who was buying a power wheel. The countdown started and at 4am the lanes opened and sale prices were honored. I was out of there by 4:05. 

Meijer put out coupons that were 'Meijer bucks'. I had one for $3 off an item of 14.97 or more. 

So babygirl's kitchen cost me $12 total. This was a steal!

I know, I know. These Black Friday posts are DRAGGING on! But I promise there is just one more.

Come back tomorrow for the final post. 

Where I became the crazy woman freezing her butt off outside in line for hours.

That will wrap up the day after Thanksgiving shopping and then we can move on to our month long Christmas puke!

Black Friday 2011-part 2

So my younger brother and I decided to brave the Black Friday crowds and go all out at all of the big sales this year. WalMart opened their sales at 10pm. So Joseph and I left my house at 9:15pm after I was struggling to get babygirl off to bed. She was so tired because she had a long day with hardly a nap!

WalMart, as usual, was a mad house already! We got there about 9:20 and the roads were surprisingly clear of traffic. We walked around and peeked into the shrink-wrapped items that weren't yet surrounded by people. Of course we snuck our hands in one to grab a game my brother wanted for our niece. Finally we parked ourselves in front of the $2.84 mini coffee makers, food choppers and waffle irons. Of course this is a hot ticket item and people are planning on getting 10-12 at a time.

The WalMart employees were walking between the most popular items that had a lot of people around them. They were even escorting people out of the store for grabbing things before 10pm! While everyone was waiting, of course people were getting chummy and pretending they would help each other once 10:00 hit. "You want 12 of these? Ok, I'll help you if you throw me 3 of those."
Ahem. Riiight.
I've been Black Friday shopping before. Apparently they hadn't.
So needless to say, we stood around for about half an hour until everyone in the store started getting antsy. It hit 9:50 and you could tell people were getting ready to move. Women started setting countdowns on their cell phones.
At 9:54 somewhere in the madness, a guy yelled really loudly, "GOOOO!"
That was all it took.
Madness erupted and you could hear everyone in the entire store start moving.
I leaned forward to grab what I needed and then ducked my head and just backed away.
I looked forward into the madness that I had just left and there stands my brother. Arms flinging. Struggling to hold onto his boxes while tossing boxes into this lady's shopping cart and leaning over the cart. I tried to yell over the noise that I was behind him and that I had what I needed. He never once looked back. Eventually I yelled loud enough that he turned his head and I motioned for him to get out of there and let's head to the cash registers. We walked straight up to the register and was only the third people there. I was elated. The two previous years I have waited in line for 1-1 1/2 hours.

If you know my brother, you'd know that he is such a giving and helping person.
BUT!
This crazy kid was trying to help the crazy shopping cart lady to get all 12 of her waffle irons that she wanted! He was practically laying on top of her cart to fight off the people who were trying to take the boxes out of it. My sweet little brother walked away with war wounds! An old lady behind him had dug her nails into his arm to try and get into the cart! He had bright red scratches all down his forearms.

Time sort of froze at this point because we had to wait for 10pm to officially hit before the registers would turn on and honor the sale prices. I took this time to head back into the madness and search for babygirl's Christmas Eve jammies. Joseph stayed in the line with our merchandise. The little bins that held the pajamas were a madhouse too. I ended up peeking through people to see where the toddler sizes were and then said pretty loudly, "Anyone see the Dora pjs?" This younger lady said they were right in front of her and asked what size I needed. She then dug through the chaos for me and handed them to me. I was so appreciative. Like my brother, there were still good and helpful people in the world.

We checked out and were out the door by 10:08pm. This included a potty break.
None of the other stores opened until 12am so we had almost 2 hours to sit around and do nothing.
We headed toward Target and planned on staying warm in the car while we waited. Our waiting involved lots of amazing talks, peeing in cups, and poking at crazy people wearing only tank tops. We had a McDonald's run and I attempted to sleep.. it just didn't work out so well. The line at Target was patrolled by a few police and it wrapped around the building and curved around a few times into another parking lot. It was insane! So we waited until midnight and decided there was no way we were waiting here anymore because the cops were only letting about 20 people into the store at a time.

This is turning into a crazy long post so I can wrap up the story in tomorrow's post.
Come back and finish up then.

Black Friday 2011-part 1

On Thanksgiving Day after everyone is done eating their dessert, we clean off the table and break out the Black Friday ads! My mom, sisters and I sit around the table flipping through the ads and some of us writing down what stores we want to hit up. By this time all of the guys have migrated into the living room to plop on the couch and watch some football.

My sister, Cortney refuses to shop on Black Friday. I think she has only ever gone twice. She always makes sure she is on the work schedule so she is 'safe' in a hospital for 12 hours will crazy ladies like my mother and her BFF are out scouring like madmen. =)

This year I wasn't sure that I would even be able to shop due to our vehicle needing repairs at the beginning of November. That took every last dime of our extra cash that would've all gone to Black Friday shopping. Needless to say, I was beyond bummed. After everyone left my house so we could move on to hubby's parents for dinner, I told him of the fabulous prices on all the 'big gifts' we wanted to get for babygirl. We had been pricing them out for about 2 months now and even looking on Craigslist for some. While I had been looking through the ads and commenting on some of the things I wished I could get, hubby had been doing some figures on his phone to see what we could cut in order to spend the very little extra that we had right now.

My amazing husband pulled through for me and gave me exactly how much I needed to get the gifts for babygirl. So I let my younger brother know that the shopping was ON!

Come back tomorrow for the crazyness that was our Black Friday experience.

You are guaranteed a few laughs.