Well it's that time of year again, Thanksgiving and Black Friday. This was kind of a rough year, first without any of my grandparents. Because of this, my mom wanted to go to a big parade, so we went to one. Mskate and I went to my in-laws on Wednesday since we spend the night with them, and it was pretty calm Wednesday.
Thursday morning my family showed up at the in-laws and we all piled into our minivan. We loaded up the chairs and wagon and blankets, and all got in our assigned spots; vikingpolak and I in the front, both moms in the middle, and mskate and IRA in the back. The drive down wasn't too bad, and we were able to find parking really close to the parade route. We found a great spot in front of the art museum that was right in the front row. The turkey trot was still going on while we were setting up, so that was kind of fun to watch since some people dress up in funny costumes. Vikingpolak knows someone who works for the parade and we were going to see if we could find her, but she wasn't right there at the start of the rout so we didn't see her. I did get to see some floats and balloons being set-up, which was kind of cool behind the scenes. We also saw a balloon that ended up popping. It was some big ball, and was secured down, but the wind was really strong and it blew it into a street sign that ended up popping it. Too bad.
Mskate and I did a little walking around, and this is when something REALLY scary happened. I look down at my hand and notice my high school class ring is missing. This is bad, I'm downtown and if I can't find my ring it's gone for good. I'm frantically looking on the ground where I walked, nothing. Vikingpolak tells me to check the car, and as I'm walking back I reach in my coat pocket and find it in there. Yay, crisis averted. I think I noticed while taking the picture below. Before the parade I went to the college welcome center that was right by where we were sitting to go to the bathroom. That was a pretty good idea since I finished like 5 minutes before the parade started, and had to run back to my seat, but I made it.
The parade was pretty good. Lots of floats, some balloons, and some marching bands. It opened with the mounted police and pooper scoopers following behind. Some of the cool things were the Elmo balloon, Captain Underpants Balloon, Pet Supplies Plus float, Ford float, Delta Dental float, Shrek Balloon, and Rainbowfish balloon. In total there were like 60 displays, for which I got pictures of all the floats and balloons. I uploaded them all to shutterstock and thankfully they all got accepted for editorial use (how I classified them). Here are some samples. The balloons were kind of weird, not fully inflated and kind of dragging. Later when watched on TV the balloons were full, probably added helium later in the parade rout when there were more buildings to act as a wind screen. Something cool is that the clowns were passing out marti gras beads, and we got a fair amount. This will be great for when we do our Easter Egg fundraiser since we can fill the eggs with them. About halfway through the parade stopped for like 10 minutes and we were just looking at the Ford float, but the waiting was OK and then it picked up no problem.
After the parade we went back to the in-laws and just kind of hung out until it was time to go to my parents. I spent most of the time working on uploading all my photos from the parade. I got about 65 of them uploaded before we had to go to my parents. When we got to my parents we had some snacks and visited with the family. Dinner was pretty good, turkey and ham, green beans and corn, and dinner rolls. Great meal. After dinner we had the accordion sing along. At some point in all this we called my aunt and had a good conversation. Vikingpolak and I spent like an hour talking to her, dad was for 30 minutes, and mom for 20. We were calling in the sun room where the drink refrigerator is, and at one point the accordion friend's son came in to get some drinks. They are from completely different sides of the family and I don't know if they've ever met each other, and when he came in we said "hey do you want to say hi to [aunt]" and he was all awkward with "uhhhh, hi." One of the last things from the night was mskate and I showed some video from our Disneyland trip. Mom really enjoyed watching it. We showed them day 2 where we went to Disneyland. Later that night we just went to bed and got ready for Black Friday; going through all the ads and making my list.
It was now 5:30 AM Friday morning, I'm up and eating a breakfast bagel, and IRA is up and getting ready. We get out and the main thing I want to do is go to Walmart, and IRA wanted to go to a used media store (games, DVDs, and comic books). There happened to be a walmart close to that store, kind of far off the normal Black Friday loop, but all good. Walmart had a bunch of toys and games for cheap, all of which went to toy drives. There were a couple of videogames that I was interested in, but they didn't have them. It was pretty empty, gone are the days of "crazy black friday" it seems. After Walmart we still had a fair amount of time before the media store opened, so we went to a Target. They still had some door buster give aways; roll a die and you could get a pin, trading cards, or some other things. IRA and I each got trading cards. IRA got some wrestling action figures since they had a sale on them. I think I ended up getting some toy drive toys here as well. I also got some baby clothes since there's always someone doing a baby clothes drive around this time. They also had some good deals on videogames, but all the videogames I was interested in were already sold out. Oh well. I was going to get some stuffed animals since mskate has those to throw at skating, but all they had were large animals so I didn't get any since those are hard to throw.
Now we went to Best Buy. I didn't have a lot noted here, just hot wheels for cheap (which they were sold out). I did end up finding some switch games though, that I forget what they are, so I guess we'll just have to wait until the Christmas blog to find out what those are. IRA found a couple things as well, so that was good. I was hoping to run into Zeldamaster93, but he wasn't working that day. One day I'll be able to go "heyy Dante" where he'll give me his sarcastic look, but not today. We went across the street to another Target, but it was a bust on both shopping and door buster giveaways. We then went to the mall for Bath and Bodyworks. The mall was a bit weird. Sears is now a Hobby Lobby, that doesn't have mall access. We parked by it since that was close, and the entrance was blocked off. We went into Hobby Lobby, but no mall access. We then had to drive to the other entrance by the food court. The mall wasn't fully open, like only 1/3 or 1/4 of the stores were open. When we walked in there was a kind of neat small arcade in a small store front area. Everything was turned off so I wasn't able to enjoy it, but it was cool to look at. We also went to the gotchapon store, which was also closed, so that was unfortunate. Bath and Bodyworks was really great, buy 3 get 4 free. I got a lot of hand soaps and pocket hand sanitizers since all the women in my life (mom, mom-in-law, aunts, and wife) all really like their stuff. They'll really enjoy it. We walked around the mall some more and went to where the arcade used to be. When I went there, it was now a pinball museum with a $22 all you can play deal. This is a phoenix, for over a decade it was a token arcade that I would go to every time I went to the mall, it closed down, and now it's risen to a pinball museum. I REALLY need to go there some time, probably do a vlog. That was that area.
It's now past 8AM, which means the media store was open. I was pretty tired, but this was IRA's big interest so we went there. They had buy 2 get 1 free on videogames and buy 2 get 2 free on dvds and blurays. I found some PS2 games to fill my collection, but that was basically it. After that I waited for IRA to finish his shopping, which was REALLY long. He found 11 movies and the clerk told him "you can get 1 more for free," so then he went back and found 5 more. It was alright for me, I finished getting caught up on Level Up Super Mario animations while mooching wifi off a neighbor store. We had one more store, CVS. They had a deal on shampoo and toothpaste, 2 things I needed. I also found chocolate covered marshmallow treats for mskate's catechism class, which was great. They also had a sale on 3 musketeers bars, so I got 2 of those. At some point we also went to BJs, where I got discounted gift cards and a Disney tracing toy. When we got back to mskate's parents house I just took a nap, like 2 hours since I was pretty tired. After my nap I watched Everybody Loves Raymond. I accidentally cast it to IRA's TV and apologized trying to turn it off, but then he was like "no, come here and watch it with me," so we watched a couple hours of Everybody Loves Raymond together, remembering his aunt who really liked the series. That night we had a take and bake pizza, which was really good and might now be a regular thing we get when we stay over. Later that night we watched some of our Disney vacation video, particularly day 3 and day 4.
Saturday and Sunday were pretty chill. We brought all the stuff home, unloaded, and on Sunday we "raided the giving tree" gathering tags that match the things I bought. After mass we pulled together a majority of our items matching to tags, and then took them to church. We we found a home for most of the stuff, now we just need to find a toys for tots collection so I can drop off the rest of the toys. We also got a tag for a stuffed animal, so mskate is going to get the largest stuffed animal in the give away supply at her parents house when she sees them next (which is the next week). We also got a thing for playdoh, and while I didn't get playdoh at black friday we had a bunch of small playdoh for the easter egg fundraiser so we just got 4 things of that and got a little playdoh stocking stuffer toy at Target to round it out. We also got a poster board for our Christmas movie marathon, so that was good. That was Thanksgiving and Black Friday this year. Kind of different from previous years, so that was alright. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
