is it really worth it?

We finished Thanksgiving today, after 3 days in Missouri with my parents, and then today with Dave's family! I will definitely not be skipping Butz and Gutz class this week with all the food that I consumed.

So do you want to hear about our Black Friday shopping?!?! And all the unbelievable deals we got!?!? OK!!!

First of all, this was the first Black Friday experience Dave and I have had, except for 2 years ago...we went out in the afternoon to Target in Springfield...no craziness.

We've been talking for months about going out EARLY to try to snatch a Kitchenaide Mixer for me, and a TV for our "new" living room (I mean, for Dave).


We also decided on a whim to hit ToysRUs at midnight in Springfield. My parents only live 10 minutes away. So we headed out at 11:45 to get there by 12. If you have ever been to ToysRus when they open at midnight you are probably laughing outloud at our complete inexperience. Because I am STILL laughing at how we thought we were just going to walk right in the store. Don't get me wrong, I knew we'd be dealing with a crowd...but we had NO IDEA this is the crowd we'd be dealing with.


This is the side of the store.

In the blocks before we got to ToysRus, we noticed that parking lot after parking lot was packed of cars. I wondered what other stores around were opening at midnight.

HA! Little did I know that was the overflow parking for the ONLY store opening at midnight.
Our jaws just dropped as we drove up on the store.

This is the front of the store. The lines began at the front and wrapped all the way around both sides of the store, all the way through the parking lot and in many places were 10 people wide!


You can just imagine my husband's comments about how we would NOT be getting in these lines. Lucky for him, I didn't bring my coat, so I couldn't anyway. Yeah, no coat. That's because silly me would have never assumed we'd be standing outside for hours to even get in the store.

Needless to stay, after a few pictures and laughs and stunned looks on our faces, we left. Back in the car by 12:07.

So we decided for a breakfast stop at McDonald's instead.

Which came back later to haunt me.

We made it to bed by 1am and then back up at this time...

Ready to try this thing again. HOPING that the midnight experience was not a sign of what we'd be dealing with all morning.

We hit Kohls for my mixer - SCORE!! Dave got in line right away while I shopped more and got a few other deals! We were in line for 45 minutes, which I don't think is that bad compared to stories I've heard.

Then Target - but the lines that wrapped around the entire store and through many isles scared us off after we realized we weren't holding enough things in our hands to even make the wait worth it.

We hit Home Depot a little after 6 when it opened to try to grab one of the shop vacs on sale from $99 to $20. We were told right away they were gone. Dave was bummed. They only had 100 of them and 700 people were at the door when they opened at 6. I guess it was one of the hot items....we should have figured. We DID snatch a couple packages of 60 batteries for $10 each.

By this time, I was not feeling so hot. Dave was about to have to pull over so I wouldn't throw up in the car. Yeah, pretty sure it was that McDonald's sausage, egg and cheese biscuit I had at 12:30am. I made it to my parents house and then crouched in their yard throwing up.

We were back in bed by 6:30am. Our kids were still sleeping.

Oh, and about Dave's TV - because if you know him, you know he's been talking about getting this for awhile now! We had been checking Black Friday ads the entire week before online, and then Thursday night we found that the one he wanted was not on sale anywhere. WELL, actually, it was....at Ultimate Electronics. The ONE store that Wichita has and Springfield doesn't. So he was bummed and trying to figure out WHO he could call that would get in line and grab it for him. HAHA!

So instead he ended up finding a great deal on Sony.com. He ordered it and it may be here today!! He's pumped! (understatement).

That brings our Black Friday experience to an end. Not so exciting. Not any SUPER great deals, although we did get $50 off my mixer. I'm not sure if we'll do it again. But it was fun to experience and to just catch a glimpse of the craziness.

It was fun do do with Dave...I was shocked he was even up for it. He just kept saying "is it really worth the savings?" (that would be why we put our Target selections down and walked out). He said unless the items were FREE when he got to the counter, it was NOT worth waiting in line for several hours just to pay. I tried to get him to let me take a picture of him so you could see the absolute pure excitement on his face...but he wouldn't let me. So I'll let you imagine that.

I'm always just curious to know what people are out to get? I wanted to ask all the people camping out at Best Buy what they were in line for? Do people come out for the HOT things or just for the general idea of great savings? Do people base their Christmas lists and what they purchase for others based off the ads? Yeah, so I think it would be fun to just walk through the lines and ask people.

So did you go out for something in particular? Did you get anything good??