Black Friday

Can I just say how incredibly STUPID I feel for waking up at FOUR AM to go shopping on the WORST shopping day in the history of EVER at the WORST establishment known to mankind?

I feel about {{{{{{{{this}}}}}}}} stupid. I have NEVER bought into the whole "black friday" thing. I have never even left my house on black friday. I have major issues with large crowds of people, especially frantic crowds of people, but I totally sold out this year and got up at 4 am to meet my older sister, Nollie for 4:30 to do a little christmas shopping. There were only 2 things I really wanted to get for B that were going to be on sale SUPER cheap this morning.

So was it worth the $30 dollars I saved on her gift? Eh.... yes and no I suppose. It was bad and frantic and CRAZY and STUPID, but even being all of that it still wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. After all, people were, for the most part, polite barring a few exceptions. The gobs of people was completely ridiculous and I felt like an idiot as well as vulture while hovering around the un-opened display of V-smile hand held systems which I thought for sure no one would be interested in considering the Nintendo DS's were on sale as well.

Side note: I NEVER had video games as a kid. My parents didn't even spring for a computer until I was in high school and even then they waited a few years before getting the internet. I'm only 24, so do the math: I'm not saying they didn't have those things when I was in school... just that parents were always about 20 years behind on updating. My parents never bought video games or systems of any sort and quite frankly, I didn't really, and still don't, feel as though I missed out on much of anything. The Hubs, however, being a boy, grew up with the video/computer game phenomenon, even if he didn't own any himself. He just played at friends' houses and such. I would have been perfectly happy to not to do the video game thing for my kids, but as I said, Tim is into the stuff so we have them. We have an x-box that primarily acts as a dvd player, but B loves to run around on Fable... mostly because her character (Tim's character) has a dog that she can throw biscuits to (poor unfortunate overfed animal). She loves to play Tim's lvl 80 character on W.O.W. (otherwise known as the World of Warcraft). She can't actually PLAY, but she loves to put him on the mount and "ride around on the pony" and she loves making the character swim. She once swam him so far out into the ocean that he died of fatigue.

Recently she has been really into PBSkids.org. and playing the seek and find games on the DS (the only video games I enjoy are seek and find puzzles). We pull up PBSkids on the computer and she plays the little freebie games. She loves Caiou and Clifford. I actually really like PBSkids.org. I was fascinated by dinosaurs as a kid and so is the B. The Caiou game section has a game where you can dig up dinosaur bones and piece them together to make the dinos. When you get it right it pops up a small video clip of the dinosaur you built as a prize. She can do those puzzles too. I never thought I'd believe in educational video games, but she has seriously learned a lot just in the last week that we've let her play around them. However, I do have to set a timer and monitor her time spent playing the games because I don't want her bottom glued to a couch or chair all day, educational or no.

We decided to go for the little V-smile game after we brought back the leapster one that was supposed to have games but didn't. You remember... the one from the hell-mart post? Yeah. The V-smile is the same thing, has the same kinds of games and everything, but is much cheaper.

Even amongst the vultures, I still managed to get one and two games without getting punched or bitten or elbowed out of the way by another adult on a toy frenzy (if you don't believe that humans have animal instincts... just go to hell-mart before dawn on black friday...). By the time I had gotten the v-smile and games (it only took me about 30-45 seconds), all of the other displays surrounding it were empty. The motorized scooters displayed next to the v-smiles were gone before they even finished opening the v-smile display. (no exaggeration)

All in all though, I have to say that this was by far and large the quickest trip to hell-mart I've EVER made. I got there, I got the one or two things I wanted to get that were on sale, a stocking for the baby, and one or two stocking stuffers. I should have taken a picture because this is the ONLY time I have EVER seen more than 5 registers opened at one time in hell-mart. It was also the shortest time I've ever waited in line at the register. The sale started at 5 am and by 5:15 I was walking to my car with only a few minor scrapes and bruises and the only person I ran over with my cart was my sister, Nollie ... and it was totally by accident! So I suppose it could have been far worse than it was... but I still feel like an idiot.