Thanksgiving, Black Friday and other adventures

I'm surprised how quickly this week has gone. Before I know it Christmas will be here and gone. The first part of the week was a bit slow because we don't have a car while we are in Missouri so we are dependant on others for transportation. It was nice relaxing around the house even if I get a bit stir crazy by the end of the day.

On Tuesday night we took my niece to Chuckie Cheese. I had never been before. There pizza is nothing to write home about but my niece enjoyed it and that is what counts. I let her ride this horse ride and she absolutely loved it. On the way home, I said to her mom that it was my favorite ride (to watch her ride) and she pipes up and says "No, Lily's favorite". Too cute:)She also enjoyed the machine that counts the tickets. She was laughing so hard as the machine would shred up the tickets.

Wednesday morning was spent hanging out around the house. Then my brother and sister in law took us to the mall. Lily made a dog at Build a Bear and named it Ruffles. Barry and I got our rings cleaned since they do not have a Helzburg Diamonds in Rexburg and the nearest location is in Boise. Yay for sparkly clean rings:)

Thanksgiving was interesting as well. Barry and I seem to be creating a tradition of spending thanksgiving with people we don't know. When we were engaged, I spent my Thanksgiving holiday with my friends in laws because she was getting married the following day. Our first Thanksgiving together was spent with mutual friends. Thanksgiving 2008 was spent with my best friend Ashlee's in laws. This year was spent with Amber's (my sister in law) Aunt and their family. The meal was wonderful. The only down side was the men of the house were downstaris smoking cigars and playing poker....I've forgotten what it is like to be in the real world and outside of the Rexburg bubble. Then we went to Amber's mom's house and had dessert. The only dessert that I had was a yummy pumpkin roll cake..no pie for me. Then again I did have pumpkin cheesecake that Tina made when we had our family thanksgiving on Sunday. I was bummed I didn't get to see the Macy's parade because Tina doesn't have television.

Friday entailed Black Friday shopping. Tina and Brandon started at midnight at went to Toys R Us. Toys R Us was crazy so they decided to come back home and sleep then go out later. 4am was Old Navy followed by Walmart at 5am. I got a nice queen size bedding set for $35 at walmart...I couldn't make it for that cheap. It is chocolate brown and turquoise blue...I am debating whether or not to wait til christmas to use it...probably won't last that long. I was quite lucky because by the time that I found the bedding sets Walmart was out of the one that I wanted. While I was standing there deciding what to do someone put their bedding set back...SCORE. Then as we were heading up front, a cashier was asking if we knew where they went. I said let me see what size it is...King...we'll take it. Tina wanted the same bedding set but in a King..double score!!! We also got quite a few movies including Annie, GI Joe, Phantom of the Opera ($2), The Grinch,Kung Fu Panda, Twilight($2) and a few more that I can't think of at the moment. Then, we went back to Toys R Us and got presents for my niece. Toys R Us was followed by Target. Target was probably the busiest and least organized of the stores that we went to. They had lines in the store winding down every isle and the lines weren't moving at all except when people got tired of waiting and just decided to leave. We had all had enough at this point so we decided to leave. Before leaving Tina made the ultimate decision to hide our goodies behind the diapers and that we would come back and buy them after breakfast if they were still there. Breakfast at Shoneys was good minus being too tired to eat. Guess what, when we got back to Target all of our goodies were still there and we waited in the checkout line for maybe 10-15 minutes instead of hours:)!!! TRIPLE SCORE!!! We then went to 2 other walmarts looking for a collage frame because the walmart that we went to opened the package and they were all gone before 5am. I found a really cute horse lamp at Gordmans but I was told I couldn't get it because it wouldn't fit in our suitcase...maybe another time. It was originally $100 and they were only charging $25 for it. By the time we got back to Tina's it was 11am. I didn't get to sleep til noon. Barry and I fell asleep on the couch because it was darker in the living room than the bedroom. We got woke up about 2 because Brandon had to get ready for work. The rest of the day was spent being lazy because we were so tired.

Yesterday, we went and got family pictures at KMart. Someone needs to explain to me why you make appointments when you don't actually follow them. We got there at our appointed time and there was 4 sessions ahead of us...needless to say we didn't get our pictures taken until an hour later. Instead of waiting around, we went over to a park and took some really cute photos there. I will post them when I get them from my mother in law. Before taking pictures Tina took us to a Japanese restaurant called Little Tokoyo. Tina and I ordered Teriaki Beef and Barry ordered spicy chicken. Needless to say, Barry was up all night with food poisoning:( while Tina and I were fine. After taking pictures, Amber decided that she wanted Mexican food. So Brandon, Amber, and Lily had mexican food while Barry and I waited. Barry was starting to feel sick at this point and I was still full because we had eaten two hours earlier. Last night included a baby shower for Amber. We played this game where you had to melt your baby from an ice cube but you couldn't touch it, fill the cup with water etc. We also guessed the time of arrival and only one person predicted correctly. She was breathing on her baby a lot and her baby was born first.

Barry is still sleeping after being up most of the night. I should be sleeping since I only got 4 hours of sleep but for some reason I am wide awake yet not fully functioning. We leave to go to Kansas City tommorrow afternoon and fly back to Salt Lake on Tuesday. We should be back in Rexburg by Tuesday night.