Survived Black Friday weekend...

I made it!!! Thanksgiving has come and gone. 16 dinner guests... a ton of turkey, ham and all the trimmings. We watched some football, ate, looked through the ads and talked till we were all blue in the face. It was exhausting.

The next morning John was eager to get out. Why I know not. lol! This man wanted to go shopping!! So with flyers in hand he left.
2 hours later he came home.... From the amount of time he was gone I figured he had pretty much gotten all the shopping done. Nope. He got 4 gifts. So I finished assembling my list and headed for the trenches.

A little not well known fact about me. I HATE to shop. Even more holiday shopping. It sucks. It is always filled with nasty tempered people who are out shopping for their love ones. With that concept in mind they have zero issue with knocking you down to get that sweater in your hand.

Thankfully nothing like that happened. I pulled into the target parking lot and it seemed mellow. Got into the store, there was a cart ready for me. Walked around. It was mellow still. I did ALL my shopping with an exception of a few in an hour!
This has never happened. So I took for home. Success...

The next day we had a gathering with family. It was fun and a lot easier than both John and I expected. We ate chatted and got caught up. After some time we left for home. Again no issue. It was a breeze.

So this is the part of the weekend where the wheels come off.

Today we went to the mall for our Family pictures. It was a well or castrated event. We got up with our check lists in hand. Trying to make sure this was as painless as we could make it.

Got to the mall.. no real Holiday traffic.. the lots we not congested. it seemed to be a snap.

Go to the place to take these pictures. waited... waited... waited some more. The kids during this time are going downhill.. FAST. So mean while Santa has come so we get time with him. Success. At least by this time we have the Santa photo.

After about a half hour behind they take us back. This is the only smart thing of the day for us. We did our family picture first. I'll add this later :o) After this we "try" to do a shot with all the boys. Nate had other plans.
It gets Bad. He's crying, screaming, hitting, running and trashing about. This went on for a bit till I told John to just go. I just finish with the baby and meet him. That part went fine. The pictures are super cute of Christian. Adorable of Johnpaul and Nathaniel. We picked our pictures and finally left. Two grueling hours later. It seemed like forever. But as we sat and had a good laugh about it later we said that we made it and at the very least we got fantastic pictures.

Another parent high five for us!!!