Black Friday

I will forever shiver when I hear the term Black Friday thanks to my first Black Friday experience this year. Don't get me wrong, it was worth it for the deals I got and I'll probably do it again next year and the year after that until Farrah and any other kids we have are older. But man oh man was it crazy out there.

I wasn't even really planning on going out but on Thanksgiving we were at my mom's house and after the meal we were looking at the ads. My mom goes a little nuts when it comes to Christmas presents (sorry mom) so she was studying each ad for more and more present ideas for Farrah. Since little miss has a birthday in December in addition to Christmas, I wanted to try to get her birthday presents at some black friday deals as well as her Christmas present.

My aunt wanted some ideas for a birthday gift for Farrah and I said a kitchen set and we found this awesome deal in the Toys R Us ad for black friday... on sale for only $70! Reg. $100So my aunt gave me a check for it and asked me to pick it up. Now I really had to go for the Black Friday deal because otherwise I was going to have to come out of pocket $30 for a gift that was supposed to be from my aunt so I went from just perusing the ads to preparing for a long night of crazy people and crowds.

So I asked my brother-in-law if he would come with me... best decision I made because there's no way I could have carried everything by myself, plus I had someone to talk to to pass the time while we were waiting in all the lines.

So we got to Toys R Us about an hour after they opened on Thanksgiving night... so I guess technically it was Black Thursday. It took us about a half hour to get into the store... not so bad I guess. Once we were in I saw the line to pay and I knew we had to hurry and grab what we came for and quickly get in line. The line weaved in and out of the aisles of the store. My brother-in-law grabbed the kitchen, I grabbed a food set to go with the kitchen, a cash register, and then this slide on sale for $25. I'm hoping it will provide hours of fun for Farrah when it's raining outside :)

Then we proceeded to the line to check out. That took about an hour and a half to get through. And there was a fight in the aisle over for an apparent line cutting incident. Here we are trying to keep a positive attitude despite the craziness.... I had to take at least one pic to document the experience.

Oh and while we were waiting in line in one of the aisles I saw this gem....

Thankfully they weren't sold out or I don't know what I would have done :)

We then took off to Target for me to get a portable DVD player with 2 monitors that attached to the back of the headrests in my car. We take long drives when we visit family and as Farrah has gotten older it has become increasingly difficult to entertain her in the car. It was on sale for $99, regularly $200. They had the line wrapping around the back of the store just to get inside. That was the worst part of the whole Target experience. There were people walking up the line selling hot chocolate and tamales to the people waiting (not a half bad idea if you ask me.) And then there was a guy that had a puppy in his trenchcoat that he was trying to sell as he was walking up and down the line. It was pretty much a circus outside the store. When I got inside it took us a while to find what we were looking for because the electronics section was a zoo. But the line to pay was really short. Like I'm pretty sure I wait longer than that at a Target on a regular Monday morning.

I should have known it would be too easy. When I got up to pay she rang it up and it came up full price. Oh heck no. I explained to her it was supposed to be $99 and it was in the ad. She seemed confused but then it appeared a lightbulb went off and she said "Oh you mean this one?" as she pulled a box out from below her register. It looked exactly the same as what I had except the monitor size on the box she had was 2 inches bigger. She scanned it and sure enough it was half price! Then she said "you know you're really lucky because I believe this is the last one and I had someone come through my line not long before you and they thought it was too expensive so I put it down her with the go backs." Score! The Black Friday gods must have been looking out for me at 2am the day after Thanksgiving.

We were going to go to Kohl's but thought we should end on a make.

That, and we were just really exhausted.

All in all, it was worth it. I think I ended up saving just under $200 and didn't pay full price on anything. I think it's worth it if you have young kids but I don't see the point if you're not buying larger quantities of stuff.

I'm done with most of my Christmas Shopping. Just a couple more people to buy for. Hopefully Cyber Monday proves to be a good day to do some shopping as well :)

Anyone else have any Black Friday Stories?