My First Black Friday

I was out early last week looking for some matching pajamas for Alekisio, Braylen, and Isabelle for Christmas Eve. Gymboree was passing out flyers for Black Friday sales, and PJs were $5.99. That's a great price for PJs, especially gymboree. So I decided we would go back. The sale was at the outlet mall, which happen to have the best sales from 12-9 am. We left at 10:30 thinking that would be enough time. My friend Cheryl was with me and her sister summed up our experience in one word, "amatuers". I didn't know you should have a detailed plan of how to approach shopping, like one person standing in line while the other one shops. I was completely exhausted because my bedtime is 11 at the latest. So let me start with the drive there. Normally I don't get over to the far right lane until the exit before the outlet mall's exit. HUGE mistake! Traffic was at a dead stop for at least a mile. I was a little nervous since I don't know that side of the island, and hawaii isn't normal. When you get off at an exit there isn't an on ramp close by. Sometimes you have to drive around and ask for directions. We stopped and got directions, which turned out to be a positive. If we would have gotten off at the original exit we would have been sitting there for at least an hour. There isn't a light there so you were at the main traffics mercy, and those people were in a hurry to get a parking spot so there was no way they were letting people merge. When we turned around and came from the other direction we had the light and the right away so we got through much faster. Our next surprise was the parking. They only had one entrance open and were charging five dollars! It was refundable if you had a receipt from Old Navy or Kmart with a time stamp between 1-3 am. The lines were outrageous so if you were there to get to another store first you might not get through kmarts line before 3. The lines in the small stores were an hour minimum wait. I was lucky and gymboree didn't have that big of a line so I was in and through the line in a little under an hour. Aisea couldn't believe we went just to get pjs. I couldn't either, but once I was there and had fought the traffic and won I had to get the pjs no matter how long I was in line. Besides they're normally $15. They're going to look too cute! Cheryl had to get some shirts from a local store since the whole store was $5.99 and it took her 1 1/2 hours to shop and get through the line. I did get my $5 back too. Luckily everyone had already gone through kmart's line by the time we got there. If you subtract the soda I bought I really only got back $3.40 which just bothers me because they've never charged before and there was just no point to it. After seeing the traffic and lines I don't know if I'll do it again, besides I almost fell asleep in line and we got home at 3:30. My kids wake up at 7. I paid for it the whole day!