Thanksgiving and Black Friday

I know I'm a few days late with this, but I wanted to post it anyway. This Thanksgiving we had a large, multi-family get together at our house. Our final headcount was 28 with 11 of those people being under the age of 13. It was definitely a full house, but a good time! Lots of family, lots of food, lots of fun. And lots of scanning the ads to make our Black Friday shopping lists (:

To prepare for Thanksgiving, J decided that we needed a new TV so we could watch football the right way. Just kidding. Actually, I'd agreed to let him look for a good deal on Black Friday, but he found a better one the Sunday before. So instead of focusing our Black Friday preparations on TVs, I got to focus on, well, everything else. I'd already arranged to have Zach spend the night at my mom's house so J and I could both go out shopping. Since Isaiah still refuses to eat anything that comes out of a bottle, he had to stay with me ... which meant taking my 6.5 month old baby Black Friday shopping. In years past, when I started Black Friday shopping at 5:30AM, that might not have been so bad. This year, however, I was the naughty mom who left the house with baby in tow at 11:45PM to start shopping ... and returned home at 6:30AM. I got some looks here and there and a few comments from some men who were waiting in line near me about how brave I was to have my baby out shopping with me at three in the morning. Said men eventually got more information than they wanted regarding WHY I had my baby with me when their comments didn't stop after one or two remarks. It's funny how quickly they stopped after processing my comment about how Isaiah "won't take a bottle." Despite having Isaiah with us, our Black Friday shopping was pretty successful. We managed to score some good deals on things for Christmas for the kids, I got a new Shark Steam mop, and J got a BluRay DVD player with a surround sound system and a few new video games -- Christmas came early for him.

And now, because no Thanksgiving post would be complete without a little cheesiness, I leave you with some things I am thankful for this year:

1) Healthy children, healthy family, and a healthy me.
2) A warm, safe place to live where there is always food on the table.
3) A husband who makes me feel so loved, is always there for me when I need him, and who works so incredibly hard for our family.
4) The ability to stay home with my children. Even if it is not the way I'd have dreamed it and they drive me crazy at times, I do feel lucky to be home with them.
5) Not having to do a single bit of cooking on Thanksgiving morning! (and yes, Thanksgiving was at our house. Thanksgiving was potluck style and everything we contributed was made by J. So lovely!)