Hello Holidays!

We are well into the week of Thanksgiving. I have no work until next Monday and lots to do in the time I have. I'm heading home for Thanksgiving with my family. Then Black Friday shopping. Saturday we put up the Christmas decorations. And Sunday, I'm home again.

Ryan and I put the tree up the other day. Lights, ornaments, stockings, holiday clock. It's starting to look like Christmas around here. Now the hunt for boxes begins. In my family, we're big on disguising the contents of wrapped boxes. We add plastic containers of beads to add sounds, heavy items like bars of soap or lots of socks to make a box seem heavier or fuller. We put DVD's in obnoxiously large boxes. It isn't rare to unwrap a present only to find a cereal box with something fancy like an Ipod inside. One year, my sister was really hoping for this one movie that had one of those sleeve covers over the actual DVD case. I slipped the movie she wanted out of the box, then put in another movie and convinced her that I borrowed the sleeve from someone else who owned the movie. I hid the actual movie at the very bottom of her stack of presents so she didn't figure it out until way later. I love tricking her, probably a little too much.

Black Friday is seriously one of my favorite days of the year. I know a lot of people hate the agressive shoppers with seemingly permanent scowls on their faces or can't stand the mad dash for the "It" toy" or gadget of the season. For me, I love getting up at the crack of dawn, armed with my list of stores to hit and specific items to find, quietly making my way through the crowds of frantic people. I've had my disappointments where I've just missed the last item on the shelf, but then I've also had my triumphs in getting amazing deals on hot products. I just love it. We leave around 4:30am and are finished by around 10:00am, at which time I go back to bed. I can only handle this type of shopping with my sister. She and I shop very well together; she moves as quickly as I do and keeps her eye on the goal. After we get all of our stuff, we take turns standing in line while we check out the other deals around the store. By the end of that shopping time, I usually don't have many more presents to buy. In the end, I trade weeks of shopping and agonizing over where the perfect gift could be for a ridiculously early morning drving all over town trying to get the best deals. Not too shabby I think. Then, I get to spend the weekend after wrapping presents and we get to look at a lovely tree inundated with presents. Love it.