Thanksgiving and Black Friday

Thanksgiving this year was spent at Ashley and Mark's house.  Mark did most of the cooking and it was marvelous!  

 It was a small group this year.  Only Mark, Ashley, Tristan, Cory, Robin, and Corbin,Kim, Kalel, my dad, and I.  

 The "three amigos" had a fun time hanging out together.

 I had made a vow not to go Black Friday shopping until it was actually Friday.  However, my sisters begged, pleaded, coerced, and finally talked me into to going with them.  Yes, I'll admit it, I caved.  The biggest reason that I gave in was because I wanted to spend my Thanksgiving with my family.  My sisters reminded me that they were all leaving and so the "family time" wouldn't happen.  I did want to spend time with my sisters, so I gave in.  No, I'm not proud of myself.

However, we did have a great time shopping, as usual. We spent way too much money, had way too much fun, got too little sleep, but got everything purchased and wrapped.  

This is what we look like while shopping at 3:30 am!

True confession:  I absolutely love spending time with my sisters and Mickenzie, and we have a great time.  However, I seriously dislike shopping on Thanksgiving.  Things just aren't the way they used to be.  We used to spend hours together combing over the newspaper ads strategically planning our trip. Now the anticipation of waiting for each store to open and then running to the things we wanted to get is no longer there.  Yes, I do admit that it is nice not to wait outside in the freezing cold, but now it just feels like a very crowded regular shopping trip.  I bought much more this year than I wanted to in the frenzy of shopping.  What we used to accomplish in a marathon of 15-16 hours, we now take 2 1/2 days to do.  I don't know, it is just different.