Our Thanksgiving Tradition

Well, I guess this is a Thanksgiving tradition....although it happens the day after Thanksgiving! We started this long about 1994, I think. It was a time when Mervyn's was giving away footballs to the first 500 customers who came shopping on Black Friday. I asked my sister if she was interested in going shopping because we had never, ever gone shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. Her husband said, "I'll watch the kids!" But I told him between the two families, we had three kids so he had to come with us so we could get three footballs! So we arranged it so that grandma (my mom) would watch all three kids and my sister, her husband and I would go shopping (MY husband had to work!) So my sister and her husband picked me up at 6:30 (DON'T yell, remember this is the first time we ever done this!) for the 20 minute drive to Mervyn's. Mervyn's opened at 7:00 am. Boy, that parking lot was crowded! Little did we know people got in line EARLY, EARLY. It took us 10 minutes to park the car and get to the front door. We walked into Mervyn's about 7:05 and they were out of the footballs!! We were up so we went ahead and shopped. We did managed to get something from J.C. Penney. We ended up getting in line to buy something from KB Toys (bad mistake). It took us forever to get through that line. It was the year that "Tickle Me Elmo"was the toy to buy. It was on the shelf when we passed through the line. We played with it and should have bought it, if we had only known! By the time we got through that line it was almost 11:30. We were starving! So we decided to go to Cinnabon. Mmm-mmm! We finished shopping and then went home for Thanksgiving leftovers!

To this day, we get out the newspaper on Thanksgiving and figure out where we want to go. We still getup early, but we have become very good at getting there on time. And we still stop for Cinnabon! We still get up very early because you have to "earn" the Cinnabon. And the we come home for Thanksgiving leftovers! My sister has already sent me an email saying she was getting excited! It has become a bonding time for us. It has become a tradition!