Thanksgiving & Black Friday

This year I have had a hard time with Thanksgiving. I was really ready to just skip over it, but wasn't really sure why. Possibly because I knew things were going to be different from out "normal". For me Thanksgiving is lots of family all hanging out, eating lots of food, and looking through Black Friday ads. I really miss those days of having everyone together. This year Chelley, John & Madelyn went to VA, my mom is in FL (has been for a few years), Mum Mum was not here, my father is not here (passed away a number of years ago), and nobody in Annapolis really seemed motivated to make plans. I feel like Thanksgiving will never be "Thanksgiving" to me again since so many things are changing so I know I need to change things up and make our own "Thanksgiving" so the boys have something to look forward like I did as a child. Chelley and I did talk the other day about the possibility of her, John, and Madelyn coming to our house for Thanksgiving next year. So Ben and I decided to buy food and make our own dinner for the four of us. Our meal would include: turkey, stuffing, broccoli casserole, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut, cranberry sauce, gravy and apple pie.

On Thursday morning I went out to buy a newspaper so we could look through the Black Friday ads and then we watched the Macy's parade on TV. (Side note: Crazy that I was in that parade 13 years ago!) We put the turkey in the over just before the parade started and then made the rest of the food after it was over. While making the sides Ben and I made a spur of the moment decision...we took the boys to see a movie! We put everything in the oven to make sure the cat didn't touch it and headed to White Marsh to see Tangled. It was a really good movie and all four of us enjoyed it. When we got home we finished up making food and heated it all up then had dinner. After dinner the boys went to bed and I rested for about an hour in preparation for Black Friday shopping.

I headed out around 8pm to get in line at Toys R Us. I arrived there just before 8:30pm and was happy to see the line was not as bad as I was fearing. However, as it approached 10pm (opening time) the line was insane with people actually standing on Pulaski Highway! I started talking with the couple in front of me and a few girls behind me. We had some action occur while standing line though. As it got closer to opening time lots of cars were driving around looking for parking and led many to driving through the line of people in the parking lot. There was one woman in a car who was being very rude and because of this nobody was letting her through. Long story short, she pushed her way through the line. She ended up hitting the girl behind me (not hard, but the car did touch her) which led to some people getting upset. The woman in the car then got really mas and threw a wine cooler bottle out of her car and it hit my on the butt! We ended up calling the police, they showed up and found the woman in the car and pulled her out of line. I have no idea what ended up happening with her, but nobody was hurt in the end. After I was finished there I came home (got home around 11:30pm) to rest for a few hours.

I left the house around 2am to go to Kohls. I then went to Target and WalMart and got back home around 5:30am. I didn't go out for any big ticket items, but was able to get some good deals on things. I laid down for a few hours and then was up for the day. In the afternoon we decided to go to Towson Town Center to go to Build-A-Bear. They had their Moose dolls on sale for $5 (normally $18) so we chanced it to see if they had any left. We got there and didn't see any, but after asking an employee she found 2. They told us they were broken (antlers light up), but we could still have them. Well, the employee pulled them out and we discovered they worked just fine once the battery pack was turned on! So we were very lucky to get the last 2!