Black Friday

Busy day around here! This is what we were up to:

1 - We did not hit up the sales. The outlet mall only a couple miles down the road opened at midnight. Oh, the consumer insanity!

2 - We got up our usual time and spent our morning watching "Christmas Vacation" and decorating the house for Christmas! The kids "helped" decorate the tree. Will was done after about a minute but Marcus loved to grab decorations and tell us where we should hang them. We still have two wreaths to hang in the windows and some lights to put up outside. We are going really easy with the outside decorations this year since (a) you can't see our house from the road anyway and (b) we plan to hit up the after Christmas sales on decorations to stock up for next year. I took a couple pictures of the kids decorating but I just don't feel like getting them uploaded right now.

3 - I do like to check out the insanity of Black Friday shopping, although don't normally participate. Around 4:00 we went to the mall to see all the crazy people. We also wanted to say hello to Santa too. We are going to wait on the official picture of the kids with Santa (which I am sure this year will have two very terrified kids in it) but we did want to have a little Santa preview. Marcus has been practicing his "Ho ho ho!" every time I ask what Santa says and I told him all day that he needed to tell Santa what he wanted for Christmas. From the safety of my arms he did say hello to Santa, declined Santa's offer to have a seat on his knee, and whispered very quietly to me that he wants yellow presents. (If anyone sees any plain yellow wrapping paper anywhere, please tell me. I have had no luck.) From the safety of Greg's arms, Will pretty much hid his face from Santa and refused eye contact. We said bye to Santa and walked away at which point Will piped up with all kinds of confidence and yelled, "Bye bye Ho!" Greg and I giggled the rest of the way through the mall.

4 - We got our first Christmas card today! Thank you very much from the person who sent the card, since I know you read my blog. Beautiful card. Umm... but it is only the day after Thanksgiving!! It isn't even December yet!! Sure, I do have my Christmas tree up and I do have my Christmas shopping done, but I thought we had a few more days before it was Christmas card season.

5 - I kept telling the kids that we put presents under the Christmas tree. Marcus started giving me lots and lots of invisible presents retrieved from under the tree and soon Will was in on the game. The gift giving went on for quite some time and I was proud recipient of several fantastic gifts such as swiss cheese, an ax, and world peace.

6 - After dinner this evening, we headed downstairs to the (makeshift, unfinished) game room and decided to see how the wood burning stove worked. Greg made a ring around the stove with some logs and explained to the kids that they were not to go inside that area under any circumstances. We kept a very watchful eye on them but they didn't once cross the barrier. After the previous owners of the house accepted our offer, they asked if they could purchase the wood burner from us for a decent amount of money. As I sat there smelling that smokey wood burning smell, curled up on the couch with the pooch, I knew there was no way I could trade that for a fist full of money. The kids are all nestled snug in their beds and Greg and I are getting ready to head back downstairs for some snuggling and tv watching.