Thomas Black Friday Shopping, take 3

Three years ago as we were preparing for Christmas my mother in law kept telling me she needed to take Briley shopping to pick out Christmas presents from them. Briley was 5 months old at the time so... not so much, BUT it gave me an idea and I suggested we make it a tradition to go shopping the weekend after Thanksgiving with Matt's parents, his sister and her family, and his aunt. It stuck and just this weekend we did our 3rd annual shopping trip. It's almost comical how LITTLE we get done and how LONG it takes us to do the simplest things, but it's a memory made and after all, isn't that what the holidays are for?

We usually leave before 10 am, do a little shopping, lunch, more shopping, dinner, more shopping... but this year we downplayed it a bit. We made plans to meet for lunch at Mugshots at 11 and then shop as long as we could. We're in an extremely irritable phase with sweet River right now so we knew the day was really up to him (and have I mentioned he screams the entire time he is in his carseat?) There was hardly anyone else at Mugshots when we arrived so we should have been in and out in an hour tops.... but we had (what we think was) a new waiter and it was an experience to say the least. He took ages to get our drinks, take our order, brought our food out in stages, and completely forgot my father-in-law's order. We were in there a solid hour and a half minimum. Oy. I find it hilarious that over the next 6 hours we only made it in 4 stores.

We make it a point to get a pic of the kids with Santa every year and this year I had gotten the little's matching Christmas shirts, but River had a blow out before we even had a chance to meet Santa. River cried a lot of the day so around 6:30 we called it quits, got ChikFilA to go, and headed home... everyone else headed for dinner and more shopping.

Hopefully next year will be a little easier... :)