Thanksgiving & Black Friday

Where has the time gone!? I swear, one minute I was just moving back from England and Taiwan (last Christmas, mind you) and now it's already been almost a year since! This year has gone by so fast, it's crazy. Thanksgiving was just last week and it was as yummilicious as ever. Except for the mashed potatoes. *Grimace* One of my favorite Turkey Day sides were totally not up to par this year. Despite that, it was a nice Thanksgiving...and Black Friday was as mad as ever.

It's become my family's Thanksgiving tradition to join 3 other families for a feast (all friends of my mother). We all trek up to the hostess's house and for turkey and all the trimmings, and then some! (Invariably, someone brings one or two Chinese dishes. This year, someone brought chow fun and my mom did an eggplant and Chinese basil dish.) I haven't been around for Thanksgiving for a couple of years - been running around the globe instead - so this is the first time I've seen the other families for a while. I caught up with the host and hostess, telling them about my experiences in England and how I found teaching in Taiwan to be boring after a month. Their daughters are at uni now (go Huskies!), so we exchanged some stories and such about UW and such.

The next day was Black Friday. Every year, I tell myself that I'm not going to join the hordes of people out shopping but who am I kidding?? Black Friday was made for me. Despite all the yelling at stupid drivers, I do quite enjoy the madness and, of course, I love the shopping.

Anyway, my sister went up to Alderwood Mall an hour after we came home from Thanksgiving dinner because they were opening at midnight (her idea, not mine, even if I did go along with the plan). It was ridiculous. I should've changed our plans when I saw the media up there earlier on TV. NEVER AGAIN. There were so many people, it felt like a packed Justin Timberlake concert at the Tacoma Dome in the mall. It was crazy. One of the shopkeepers told me that some people were running to the stores. Running. What the?! My patience was severely tested so we left after a couple of hours. My sister did most of the shopping as there wasn't much I wanted or needed to buy. Oh, but that wasn't the end.

We headed home, roused my mom and we trekked out to the factory mall in North Bend because she wanted to go to the Coach store. (They were open at midnight, too.) After about an hour and a half there, we headed home again. Mom went back to sleep, I took a 15 minute nap and then my sister and I went down to Target. I love Target. Of all the stores I visited this Black Friday, Target was the most rewarding and productive. It opened at 6 am but we waited in the car until the line outside died down. An hour later, we went to Bellevue Square, which opened at 7 am. My sister wanted the free snow globe JCPenny gives out every year to add to our collection and even though they'd opened at 5 am, they still had a lot left which made my sister's day. She bought a (RED) bag (now I want one, too) and some clothes. We made our final trip home around 8 am, and I crashed for 8 hours.

I woke up around 4 pm, called Ryan and headed over to his place. We had fried chicken, corn and biscuits for dinner and watched The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green. HILARIOUS!!! David Monahan, who plays Leo in the film, is very good looking, too. Mm, hmm!