Black Friday Was Crazy!

I thought that last year's Black Friday was intense, staying up till six in the morning with Emily and her family, but I was proven wrong this year. This year, I stayed out until eight in the morning, took a half hour nap and then was going back to shopping again until four in the afternoon. Let me tell you how the whole event went.

On Thursday morning, I woke up, took a shower, and got ready to go to my cousin's, Emily, birthday/Thanksgiving party. My family left our house around 10 and got there around noon, and I preceded to play with and catch up with all of my little cousins who I have seen in ages--like, since the summer, I think, lol. It's so weird seeing them and realizing how much they've grown up since my memory of them is still stuck on times when they were younger.

And it's astonishing to realize just how much technology has made an impact on our generation, because I remember how, in past parties, we (the kids) would always be running around the house or outside playing games or taking walks and talking about crazy things. But during Emily's party, everyone was on their laptops, iPads, or phones. However, when I say "everyone," I meant all of the older kids who had these devices; there were a ton of little kids between the ages 3-10 who were just running around the house playing games.

Lol, I feel really old when I realize that kids these days have no idea what these are.

But yeah, we were still talking to each other and were friending each other on social media sites and goofing off, but still...it was disconcerting for a bit to think about how, in the past, we would have been escaping the house to go outside and play and then think about the present, where we were hanging out in Emily's room using electronics as our escape.

Luckily, that wasn't what we did the whole night, or else I would have gone crazy, lol. Emily's mom kept on getting her to go downstairs to talk to guests and so we went downstairs and goofed off there while keeping her company. And we got to catch up and reminisce with Linh and Jenny and Eric, who we hadn't seen in years.

And then the parents wanted to take pictures of all of us, which was insane, since there were so many kids, lol. Then, there was the cake, and of course, many pictures of that too. Then, we left to go home around 7:30.

We got home around 10, so I had an hour to re-cooperate before Shanice and Jackie came over for us to plan out where we were going for Black Friday. We hadn't seen each other since August or September, so I thought that it would be a fun way to catch up and hang out. And it was! We spent around nine hours together, talking about our college experiences and shopping and hanging out in between it all.

In the beginning, we were joking about how we were going to fill up the trunk of Shanice's car with bags from all of our shopping, but I didn't think that we really did until around 5 in the morning, when it really was starting to run out of room, lol.

Look at the fruits of our labor. :P

After everyone came over, we decided to go to Best Buy first since Shanice wanted to buy a wireless mouse and look at the games and TV's, and I wanted to check out their external hard-drives. Then we would hit Target since they had good deals there, too. Then we would go to Riverside in Macon and hit up the stores there.

We generally stuck to that plan. :P We went to Best Buy around 11:30, and the parking and line outside was ridiculous. We parked in the parking lot right next to Best Buy since there were no parking spaces left, and then we had to walk to the back of the line, which wounded around to the back of the building. We didn't have to wait terribly long before the line started moving, but we still had to wait around an extra 20 minutes after midnight since they were only letting in a certain amount of people there.

And my friend Cullen came over and waited in line with us since he was with his mom and her fiance ahead of the line. He didn't have anything that he wanted to buy, which was why he didn't mind going farther in the line, lol. So yeah, he hung out with us while we were in the store.

I ended up only buying the second season of The Big Bang Theory since the external hard-drives were more expensive than the ones online at Amazon. Shanice bought a toaster and a mouse, Jackie bought some DVDs, and Cullen bought a CD.

Then we went to Target where there wasn't a crazy stampede of people, lol. A lot of the bins were already empty, so we had just missed the rush hour over there, which was cool with me since I had found an even cheaper external hard-drive on sale at Target and this box full of different types of nail polish for Shelle's Christmas present.

By then, we were hungry and thirsty, so we went to McDonald's for a quick midnight snack before deciding to check out the mall nearby since it was supposed to be open already. It was half true. The department stores were open, but none of the smaller stores inside were yet; we couldn't even go inside the main entrance. We ended up leaving Sears empty-handed.

After checking online to see if the stores at Riverside were open yet (most of them were), we drove over to Macon and went to Charlotte Ruse first. Then we went to the bathroom for a potty break, lol. Then we went to Victoria Secret since Jackie had wanted to go there. Then we went to American Eagle since everything was 40% off and right next door. Then we went to Journey's since Jackie had wanted to buy a pair of Vans since she had never owned one before. Then we went to this hat store next door since Shanice had wanted to buy a hat. Then we went to Game Stop since Shanice had wanted to see if they had any used iPads on sale (there weren't).

Surprisingly, unlike how I usually feel after shopping for more than two hours at the mall, I didn't feel tired. Even more shocking, my feet didn't hurt. By this time, it was already five in the morning and all three of us were fine. Yeah, we were tired, but not so tired that we couldn't continue shopping for a few more hours without feeling physically drained.

But yeah, after Game Stop, we decided to go to Starbucks to get some coffee as a break and to warm us up. So we spent half an hour there before driving back to the mall in time to wait around 10 minutes for DSW to open up since they were open at six for Black Friday. Shanice got this pair of boots that had heels that she had wanted for a while since they were on sale, Jackie bought a pair of moccasins since her old pair was falling apart after she accidentally stepped in water with them on, and I finally got a pair of boots!

They're similar to the pair of boots that I had posted about a while ago but without the wings, lol. It took a while to decide if I wanted a pair in black or brown, but I eventually decided on the black pair, which was the only one left. :P Luckily for me, the boots were on sale, and I got to use Shanice's military discount, so instead of costing around $65, it was only $43. :D I'm so excited to wear them! :DDD

As we were leaving the store, a lady came up to us and gave us these big Christmas bags with deals inside of them and told us that if we had spent over $100 shopping there, we could get $10 back if we took our receipts to the tent with the Christmas tress in the middle of the mall, so we went back to Shanice's car to put up our bags, get our receipts, and calculate our total money spent. Together, we had spent around $260 at the mall. Jackie had spent around $110 by herself, so we let her get the $10 giftcard, and I gave Shanice one of my receipts so that she had $100 to get one herself as a payment for gas since she was driving us everywhere that day.

By the time we were done with everything, it was a few minutes until seven, which was when Barnes & Nobles was opening, so we decided to wait inside Shanice's car until they opened to check out their DVDs and see what deals they had in there. There wasn't many book deals, but they had quite a bit of deals on DVDs there. Unfortunately for me, I had left my giftcard at home, so I didn't buy anything there. I just took pictures of books that I wanted to buy online later when I got home so I wouldn't have to spend any more money.

After that, we went back to my house, got our bags and went home. My mom was awake when I went inside, and she was surprised to realize that I was out shopping until eight, lol. I went up to my room, dumped everything in a pile on the floor, washed my face, and went to sleep.

I ended up waking up a half hour later and went to my laptop to do some online shopping. Around 10, Shelle came in and told me that Mommy had called her and asked her if she wanted to go to the mall and buy a nice outfit for the cruise that we're going to in a month, since that was what she was doing at the moment. Lol, Mommy told Shelle not to bother me since I came home late and would be sleeping, but she saw my door opened a bit and figured that I was awake, so she asked me if I wanted to go with her. I did.

I mean, I totally forgot about the cruise and my lack of nice dresses/clothes, so I was not turning down an opportunity of my mom buying clothes for me after I spent all morning spending so much money. :P

So we went to Belks to find my mom since everything was on sale, and I ended up finding two dresses, a sweater, and a pair of shorts while Shelle found a nice shirt, a pair of boots, and the exact same sweater that I had gotten, lol. My mom had found some nice shirts to wear for the cruise.

She left us at the mall to go to the Asian store to get some ingredients for dinner since Shelle had wanted to do some more shopping to find a dress for the cruise and hadn't done any Black Friday shopping yet. Shelle ended up buying a new Fossil bag while I got an awesome giraffe Fossil wristlet. Then, I was getting lightheaded from not eating anything in a while and lack of sleep, and Shelle was getting hungry, so we stopped to eat before going to American Eagle.

By then, Mommy had called to tell us that we needed to take Brian to the mall to find him nice clothes for the cruise, so after we went to American Eagle, we went to McDonald's to pick up food for him and Mommy before going home and chilling for a little bit before going back to the mall.

We decided to go to JC Penny's first to see what type of sales that they had, and I ended up going back and forth to the men's dressing room, trying to find the right pair of khakis that would fit my bro. Then we went to the women's section so that Shelle could look for dresses, but she didn't find any; instead, she found some cute shirts and I found a bunch of awesome cardigans that I wanted to buy. Since we were using my mom's card, we ended up only buying two of the shirts that Shelle wanted, and one of the cardigans that I wanted along with Brian's nice clothes.

Then we went to Maurice's since they had nice business/dressy clothes, and Shelle found a dress and top that she wanted. After that, we went back to Belk's to see if they had any sales on nice guy clothes, but even with the sales, they were still expensive, so we quickly left. By then, it was around 4:30 when we went home and I was dead tired. I needed another nap in order to function.

So I did. It ended up being another half hour nap. After I woke up, I finished my online shopping and was officially done with shopping for the day, lol.

So yeah, that's how my Thanksgiving/Black Friday went. Super insane the amount of shopping that I did, but on the bright side, I only spent around $200, and it wasn't all for me! I bought presents! So I feel pretty accomplished.

Now I have no idea how next year's Black Friday is going to be after these last two years, lol.

But I hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving and that those who went Black Friday shopping also had loads of fun. As for me, I'm still re-cooperating from the whole experience by goofing off on the interwebs and not doing my calc homework. :D

Bye~

pointy.star