Black Friday

We actually started Christmas shopping early, like October. But decided to put a major dent by shopping today…Black Friday.

To prepare, yesterday, we bought the paper, we compared the sales and decided to get up at 4, to make it to Target before 6 (when they opened) NO, I wasn’t going to be crazy and go to the Alderwood Mall or Wal-mart at 4 am…I value my life! I read in the Everett Herald online that the Everett Wal-Mart had a line all the way around the bldg at 4:15 am…I would have NEVER gotten in! I have gone to Alderwood before on Black Friday, from what I heard it wasn’t quite as bad as previous years, but I didn’t want to get trampled this year.

First strike, I woke up late. We left at 8am. Neil dropped me off at Target and went to Car Toys…where the item that we planned to buy was sold out. They told Neil that the one on sale they only had 12 when they opened. It was RIDICULOUSLY on sale, you would have thought they would stock up. BUT after several stores, I noticed that EVERYTHING on sale was sold out. And not because they were busy. I came to one conclusion, the stores advertised some MAJOR sale items to get you into the store, but under-stocked them, so that you couldn’t buy them if you weren’t one of the CRAZY people at the door for 5 hours before open. Instead of while supplies last, they should have put “First 10 People”. I guess it’s incentive for when we have kids that actually ask for things that we HAVE to get them for Christmas. 🙂 At least we have a couple years before Kaeden starts “expecting” certain things to appear under the tree.

At Target, although there were some really good sales, I noticed that most things were regular price. They usually have more and better sale items. The shelves of full priced items were very well stocked. Those are the things that you decide to buy when the item you were there for was sold out. I ended up doing just that. I couldn’t go out on black Friday and NOT buy gifts, so we bought a couple things at full price. There were a couple things, don’t get me wrong, that we bought BECAUSE they were on sale, even though they weren’t on our list, so I guess it was worth it.

SO, in conclusion, our Christmas Shopping List is 17 people long this year and we have 7 gifts left to buy. Not too bad, seeing as though it is still November 🙂

Happy Holidays!