Black Friday Shopping

Let me start off by saying, I will NEVER do that AGAIN!

Until baby girl wants a pink Power Wheels and they're only $88 dollars at Wal-Mart.

That was one of our horror stories of Black Friday Shopping, but I'll get to that in a minute. Keep in mind that there were only 2 things I wanted at Babies R Us and they went on sale at 5:00am Friday morning, so I was basically just along for the ride.

It all started with my sister Andrea's list for Toys R Us deals that started at 10pm on Thanksgiving night. My sister in law Sha was planning to go and told me to call her when we went. Andrea figured we could go right around 10 or a little after and just walk right in. WRONG! Sha actually called Tray at 7:30 and said she was already standing in line. We talked about our plan of attack and headed to Toys R Us at about 9:00 pm. So we find a parking spot and see the line of oh, maybe 1,000 people! Andrea's words to my sister Marilu and I "I don't want to play anymore! I'm intimidated let's go home!" We had a little pep talk and decided to stay. After reviewing the list of what Andrea wanted we decided that when we got in I would stand in line and Andrea and Marilu would get all of the stuff. It's now 9:55 and we get out of the car still thinking that we'll just pretend we didn't see the line and walk in. As we're walking up I hear Sha call my name and so we stand in line with her. (Yes we were totally THOSE people who cut in line and the people behind us talked about us the rest of the time and I felt terrible. Sha said that everybody was doing it in front of her and my rationalizing was that I was pregnant and it was 45 degrees and raining.) So anyways, Toys R Us was actually pretty smart in staggering the people they allowed in the store and giving out tickets at the front door for the big ticket items. I found out that one of the things I wanted they didn't have in stock at the store but they could order it online for me and ship it. It wasn't that bad at all, but only because Sha totally helped us out and saved us a spot. Everyone got what they wanted and all was good.

Now with one store down and it only being a little after 11:00, our adrenaline was pumping and Andrea decided that she had to at least TRY to get the $88 Power Wheels for Anthony at Wal-Mart. I don't know if you've ever heard about Wal-Mart's Black Friday, but it is RIDICULOUS!!! They put everything in random places all wrapped in black so you don't know what it is. We walked in and just saw lines EVERYWHERE. I made my way to the potty and my sisters found where the Power Wheels were in gardening. When I walk up to them it's about 11:40 and the deals were supposed to start at 12 midnight. Here's what I see: tons of carts, about 100 people and a pallet of 10 Power Wheels. My sisters did not have a cart and there were huge men in front of them and ladies eyeballing each other. I told my Andrea, "There's no way you're getting one, let's go home." She was set on at least trying so at 11:45 I got the heck out of the way and at 11:50 I hear a roar rising up in Wal-Mart. Someone jumped the gun so everyone started ripping everything open and there was nothing any of the workers could do. At that point I seriously feared for my sisters' lives! I thought for sure one of them was going to get trampled and all I could do was stand back and hope they came out of the mess alive. Next thing I know I see them coming out of the rubble with a cart, that they didn't have to begin with, and a Power Wheels! Andrea looked scared and Marilu was pumped. Then we all laughed and high tailed it to check out. We were able to help Sha out at the checkouts and we let her cut in front of us so she didn't have to wait 2 hours in line!

The rest of the 6 hours of our shopping was a blur that involved:

*briefly going home to regroup and plan our next stop

* witnessing a fight at Kohl's just getting in the door

*waiting in line for 45 minutes at Kohl's to check out

*going BACK to Toys R Us to get the 2 things I wanted at Babies R Us

*trying to order a glider that was on sale for $200 from $400

*waiting 45 minutes for the BRU employees to figure out what they're doing

*getting excited that I got a Baby Bjorn for $48 (originally $80)

We got home at 6:00 am and I slept for about an hour before Anthony was up and ready to play. To make a long story short, I THOUGHT that the Babies R Us employees had ordered the glider that I wanted, but come to find out they had no clue what they were doing and the glider was never ordered. It was out of stock by 9:00 am Friday morning. And the worst part, one of the things they messed up was printing the receipt, that now I know never exsisted, so I walked out without a receipt. I went back on Saturday and thankfully they were back in stock and the manager honored the price and now it's on it's way to me!

So even though I got some good bonding time in with my sister's, Black Friday shopping was a BAD idea! I found out the hard way what lack of sleeping and eating can do to a pregnant woman's hormones! I cried and had a mini breakdown Friday night and was still emotional and crying on Saturday. And come to find out, the 2 things I wanted could've been ordered online from the comfort of my bed. Oh well, lesson learned. Here's some pics of the cute clothes I got for baby. I wanted tons more but my sister's and mom bought tons of other stuff so I didn't need to buy much.

cute little leggings

I wanted a newborn onesie with a bunny on it since she'll be born right around Easter

baby jeggings!

Love, Mariel