Thanksgiving Weekend

Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving?  Did anyone go shopping on Black Friday?  Did you have a good, long weekend?  The answer for me to all of those questions is yes. 

For Thanksgiving, I went to my Aunt Terri's house in Somerset, Wisconsin. It was a very typical and traditional Thanksgiving for our side. Nothing out of the ordinary and it was good to see everyone again. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday and I love all the food but I normally don't pig out.  I eat a little bit of everything and always want to eat more but I'm always too full.  I wish I could have had leftovers to bring home though. 

My cute fuzzies in the afternoon

I love this photo.  Colton is so cute with his jeans and hoodie on.

Me: only socks on  Jamie: big tall boots on

Keith, my cousin Jake and Hunter

I got home around 8 pm and debated whether or not I wanted to go to Wal-Mart around midnight as they opened at 7 am on Thanksgiving and wouldn't close until 11 pm on Friday night.  There were a few things that I had my eye on for family members for Christmas and for myself and I finally decided to go there.  I got to the store at 11:40 pm and asked the guy up front where the carts were.  He chuckled and said they were gone a long time ago.  Uh-oh.  I then felt as though this whole experience would be more than I bargained for.   Before midnight, most things that went on sale at 12:01 am were shrink wrapped and you couldn't get to it and there was an employee standing there watching to make sure no one touched it.  At midnight, they gave us the go-ahead over the loudspeaker to start shopping.  I picked up what I needed and headed to the other area of the store.  Because I didn't have a cart, I wasn't sure how I was going to carry everything so I stopped off in the aisle with laundry baskets and picked one up as my "cart".  I picked up the other items I wanted and headed to the checkouts as quickly as I could to avoid a line all the way back to the store.  It was  very difficult to even move anywhere and it was pretty much a complete nightmare but I tried my best to remain patient.  I got to the checkouts and got in a line that was only about 4 people deep.  Not bad!  When I checked out, I told the girl I didn't want the laundry basket so it would be a difficult task to carry all this stuff to the car.  I struggled carrying these bags and the item that was too big for bag and as I walked out of the store and across the parking lot, one of my bags broke.  I put all my stuff down, shuffled, regathered and just realized there was no way to make this work so I started kicking and gradually shifting my bag across the parking lot.  After a couple of kicks, two teenage girls and their mom asked if I needed help.  YES!  They took my one big bag, which allowed me to carry the other items and we walked to the way back of the parking lot where we both just happened to be parked two spots away from each other.  We got to my car first so I put my items down next to my car and walked towards the girl who handed me my other bag and thanked them graciously for their kindness, wished them a Happy Thanksgiving and was on my way.  I don't know what I would have done without them.  They helped me so much.  

Once I got home, I was not going to try and carry all of this stuff into my house so I took the one bag and left the rest in the car for the next day but I did realize that I forgot to buy something for my mom that she wanted and I was so bummed that I didn't remember when I was at the store. 

I totally forgot about the stuff in the car on Friday and didn't remember until Saturday night when I wanted to wrap some remaining presents so I went out to my car and brought the rest of the stuff in. When I got in, I noticed there was a 10 pack of Hot Wheels cars in my bag.  I didn't buy those and thought I they must have been sitting at the checkouts and go into my bag by accident.  I pulled out the other items that I bought and then realized that there was two of the same items I had purchased and one of the items I purchased was missing.  And then I saw the item that I had forgotten to purchase for my mom and then it dawned on me.  The people that helped me carry my bag to my car handed me their bag instead of my bag.  I felt SO BAD when I realized what happened, especially since they went out of their way to help me.  The receipt was not in their bag otherwise I thought their name would be on the receipt to contact them and I really didn't have any options for trying to contact them.  I could have brought the bag to the store to see if they did the same thing but it was such a long shot that I just accepted the mix up.  Our bags happened to be very similar however she is missing more than I am.  I bought 2 of one thing and she bought 2 of another thing and that's what got mixed up.  I gained one of one thing and she gained one of another.  I got one extra of something I didn't need  and I also got the item I meant to buy for my mom.  I also got the Hot Wheels cars, which I will be donating to Toys for Tots.  

All my presents are wrapped and my tree is up and here's is how pretty it looks.

Without cat

With cat--Fuzzer posed so very nicely for this picture

I had to work a little from home on Friday but in the early evening, M and I went to go eat and then stopped at my sister's house for a surprise visit.  After that, we ended the night drinking wine and listening to music.  M had asked me if I wanted to ride with him up to his cabin the next day as he said he forgot to lock the door last time he was up there during the second hunting weekend.  I said I would ride along as it would be a good afternoon activity.  

On Saturday we got in the car and drove up to Markville about 115 miles away and while I usually love riding in the car and listening to good music and chatting with M, it wasn't that enjoyable to me. It wasn't M or the music, it was just a horribly long drive for some reason. I felt like a little kid again wanting to scream, "Are we there yet?"  We did get there and the roads up there were not very good due to the snow and just being a remote area so driving was somewhat slow.  We got to the cabin and guess what?  The door was already locked.  M said it must have somehow locked after he left.  The place is like 100 years old so the door handle is less than new or perfect.  So we just turned around and went back home for another super long car ride but we did stop and take some pretty pictures of the snow and nature. When we were driving through a street that goes through an Indian reservation, I was looking in the woods and a huge bird standing there and I realized it was a bald eagle and told M and we backed up to get to it but it flew away and it was pretty crazy to be that close to the bird and see how huge his wingspan was.  

We found these at the gas station up there.  Looked delicious but didn't taste that great.

On Sunday, we watched football all day long and saw a Vikings win, a first win for interim head coach Leslie Frazier as well as the first Vikings road win since November 1, 2009!  We'll see what happens this Sunday at home.

I had just a fantastic low-key Thanksgiving holiday weekend and the time went slow enough where I wasn't complaining when I had to go back to work on Monday.  I hope you guys had a great one too!