Black Friday Success

Wow. If you've never tried black Friday shopping, don't. I view it as very addictive!

For the second year in a row, Samantha and I braved the crowds of Rapid City, South Dakota for one night of shopping.

Last year our schedule involved going to Rapid and checking into a motel room for about 4 hours of sleep and shopping beginning at 3 am. This year new times meant we were shopping at midnight. Not sure I was real excited about that, but we were looking for deals so who cares.

After sending the kids with Don and Amanda following Turkey dinner we were free to spend a night without sleep. We packed for cold weather, like what we faced last year. However we were pleasantly surprised with high 40's to mid 50's. Weather wasn't much of a factor.

We arrived in Rapid City around 9-9:30 pm and decided before we went to stand in the line we had have an appetizer at TGI Friday's. During this time we also schemed a wonderful "Divide and Conquer" strategy for Kohls.

The strategy worked to perfection. We were in line about 50 yards from the door we entered the building at 12:02 am and had our gifts, paid and out of the building by 12:45.

From Kohls it was Target to grab a couple items, mainly for my mom. After grabbing everything we needed in 45 minutes we headed to the line and proceeded to wait for more than an hour. During this time, I headed to the in store Starbucks and waited about 25 minutes for coffee for the both of us. By that point coffee was important!

After checking out of Target we headed to McDonalds. Not to eat but to strategize for Menards. Menards killed us last year. They have great deals, but overall they aren't a store set up for a mad Black Friday mash of costumers. We spent close to 2 1/2 hours in their store last year. We needed a good strategy to figure out how to get in and out. After a fairly successful session on strategy we headed to Menards at 3:30 am. We decided to sleep as we had 2 1/2 hours till they opened. Sleep was poor but it was at least rest. By 5 we were in line and ready to go.

We entered Menards at 6:01 and were out of the store at 6:25. We conquered Menard's! At this point we were basically done with our shopping. We did hit Scheel's and then went back to Menards to make sure that we were set. By 8 we left Rapid City and headed to Newcastle to grab the kids and head home for sleep.

Sleep.

Samantha immediately headed to bed while I dealt with the kids and got them down for naps.

I tried to lay down on the coach and got about an hours worth of sleep.

Sleep.

Tonight I will be sleeping!