Christmas shopping

I still have my nasty head cold but I decided to blog anyway...

Every year for the past 5(? Amy, just how many has it been?) years, my mom, sister, and I travel to Syracuse (an hour away) to go Christmas shopping all day long. The men hold the fort down with the kids and the women have a full day of shopping, eating out, and browsing without kids. It's heavenly.

People always laugh when we tell them just how long we go shopping for. It's usually 14-16 hours. This year I was gone 16 hours. Left the house at 8am and came home around 12:30am. =) How do we do it you ask? Well, this year we started off at the Christmas Tree shop ( love it!) which opened at 9am. Then we headed to Chicago UNO to eat lunch (yes, we were in the CTS that long). After lunch we shopped at one of the 3 malls near Syracuse then scooted over to Toys R Us by 3pm to get their door buster deals for the weekend. By the way, we save our money all year long to afford this trip so we pay cash for everything! Now that you know that, I can safely say I spent $201.00 at Toys R Us. =) I don't shop for just Christmas, but for birthdays around Christmas as well (there are 5 of them!). Dinner time rolls around so we park ourselves in a booth at Outback Steakhouse. YUM! Dinner finished. Time to go shopping! We stop at mall #2 and stay there till we were unfortunately told that it was closing (Boo!) We hadn't even made it to Sears yet! Well, it's late and all the stores are closing. So what are 3 ladies with a mission to do? Go to the 24 hour Walmart! I think we were in Walmart until 11pm but by then we're getting hungry again. McDonald's is right across the street so we get in line at the drivethrough and my sister (who's driving) turns around to ask my mom what she wants-and the laughing begins. When we're tired-watch out. We can laugh like nobody's business. Why were we laughing? You couldn't even see my mom in the backseat. We had so many packages in that car that the trunk was full, the backseats were full, and I couldn't see anything below my chest. Full to the brim. We laughed so hard my sis couldn't even order our ice cream and had to request some extra time to compose herself! So, yes, we do this every year. The last weekend in October. All day. And no, I'm not finished. =)


I forgot to add I win the "most money saved" prize this year (ficticious of course). I spent $83.00 in JCPenney and saved $187.00. Whoo baby!