black friday and bowl time

{WARNING: very long post!!!}

this morning, my phone started buzzing at 3:15. it was my sweet friend (and new mom of THREE), shana, telling me that she was on the way to meet me.

it started yesterday.....

shana had no intentions on going shopping on black friday. not like last year. or the year before that. yes, she is my faithful friend who will get up and endure the other crazies to see how many good deals we can get! but this year i truly didn't even ask her if she would join me, considering she and jeff (dawson and grayson, too) just welcomed brantley 10 days ago.

so yesterday their family went to tommy's mom/step-dad's with us for thanksgiving. when they got to our house, she saw it. and by "it", i mean my stack of sales papers that i was taking to tommy's mom's house so that i could strategize!

well, the thrill of the hunt got to her and she couldn't handle it. shana said that she would be there. our problem? wal-mart and target both opened at 5:00 and both had things we wanted.

so we weighed our options. and wal-mart won out.

we arrived at wally world at 4:00 to find hardly ANY parking spots available. i was fine with this - shana on the other hand....it kinda stressed her out. but it was fine and the main thing we needed they only had 25 of - we were numbers 16 & 17!!!

now the checkout? that was a TOTAL nightmare......

anyway....that was it - stop #1...............

next was on to target. shana had a few things here that she needed to get and i did, too. we had planned to be at target by about 6:00, but instead it was 6:40. the checkout lines were INSANE. we bypassed them and went on to try to find what we wanted.

she found hers, i found mine, and we got in a checkout line. this at least held our spot and one of us would stay with the "goods" while the other went to see if we "needed" anything else.

whereas checkout at wal-mart was close to an hour (seriously), we were in and out of target in about 45 minutes. AND i got the closest parking spot possible!

i love praising God in the little blessings like that!

so there we have it......stop #2.......

after leaving target, tommy met us with mpb. he has to work today (boo!!!!) downtown, so he got her ready for me for the day!

our church does something that i love at Christmas. we adopt children who may not otherwise have a very good Christmas (gift wise). normally we take up money for a few weeks (we have 3 children assigned to our class - 2 from a school we partner with and 1 from within our church) and then all of the women go to dinner and go shop one night.

well, i saw some of the deals that were available yesterday (old navy) and today (lots of places) and decided to use the money that we have raised already (i just paid out of pocket for the rest) and take advantage of some of these sales!

one of our children wanted a new Bible, Bible cover, and Christian fiction books. i went and got these today!!!

so there it was............stop #3...............

after leaving lifeway, we went across to shoe carnival to look for shoes for the children on our lifegroup list (and i had a coupon!!!). after looking for a little bit, we found what we needed (and saved some money in the process) and headed out!

stop #4.........

i went to old navy yesterday to take advantage of some coupons and good deals (and to go before today's crazy crowd), but shana had not been, so we went in there after we left shoe carnival. i still found a few more things that i needed to get (imagine that!).

stop #5............

after all of this shopping, it was 9:30 and we were STARVING. i mean, we HAD been up since 3:30! so mary peyton suggested that we head to mcdonalds for breakfast. not such a bad idea. shana and i were able to visit (without having to hunt for bargains or deal with crowds) and mary peyton got to play for a few minutes to get out some bottled up energy! it was a win-win situation!

if you're keeping up with the count, stop #6...........

after breakfast, we took shana back to her car so that she could head home. shana banks with tommy and needed a deposit, but also needed to get home to that sweet new baby. so mpb and i ran to wachovia to help her out.

stop #7............

mary peyton and i decided to go to renaissance after the bank to hang out. she was seriously being so good and i just wanted to do some things that we enjoy together.

our first stop was barnes & noble (i KNOW you're not surprised). she wanted some hot chocolate (i went against my norm and got some, too!) and to look at magazines. so we did!

and it was so precious to just sit and enjoy "big girl" time with my angel....

#8................

mary peyton looked at me and said, "mommy, can we go to 'lemon beret' and see if they have my animal bracelets in?". i told her, "sure, but miss courtney would have called me if they came in." (since we go in there at least once/week!). mpb thought for a minute and said, "well, how 'bout I ask them this time and not you, ok mommy?". wow. like that's going to magically make them have them!

since lemon meringue does not have a logo that i could find on the internet, i took a picture of the front of the store off of facebook. this truly is such a precious store and ranks up there as one of my favorites for mpb (along with sweet dreams, sweet pea, and popfizz!). the decorations in there are unbelievable - like you are in a fairy tale!

#9.................

so after leaving renaissance, mpb and i came home. we've been playing school and just enjoying the lights of the tree and the fire in the fireplace. it's nice to just be here and not have an agenda. well, besides a few things that i've got to get done before we head home....

but right now we are watching this:

i asked mpb who she is for and she said, "between alabama and auburn? i'm for auburn". really? how did that happen? i guess i'd feel the same way if she said alabama. i don't know why she chose auburn, though!

but she's been bouncing around cheering and flipping out over touchdowns and such. she just loves football. i guess i should expect that, huh?

tomorrow mary peyton will go to her first away football game. i can probably count on one hand how many home Ole Miss games she has missed in her lifetime. if it's a game i can't go to, she still goes with her daddy.

but she has never been to another stadium for an Ole Miss game. that will change tomorrow. and she isn't all that happy about it.

when we got home from the Ole Miss/UAB game, our egg bowl tickets were in the mail. i showed them to mpb and she said, "WHY does that say mississippi state???" i replied, "because Ole Miss plays up there this year and these are our tickets to the game!". she said, "ok....but why would we want to go up there?".

she's like her daddy.....bleeding red and blue!

(i found this picture and thought it was too neat to not share!)

hope you all had a good Thanksgiving and a black friday that suited your taste (shopping or not!)