Family Camping 2026

Hey everyone, it's kind of that time of year again, where my camping family gets together for camping over the weekend. This year was kind of different, not just because the parent generation has been doing this for 40 year, but also because Canada was on fire and the smoke was coming down to the northern states, which included us. It started Wednesday from what I remember, I went outside and smelled something burning, and I'm like "Canada's on fire again, isn't it," and sure enough it was. The smoke was so thick the air quality was at the worst levels and was like over 500, where 3 minutes outside was like smoking a pack of cigarettes. This was also a week after MMT's wedding, so I had a lot of packing to do, and since the air quality was so bad we prepped for basically spending the whole time in our hotel (because mskate and I were just going to visit while staying the night at the hotel). I basically brought our entire game shelf and some lego and puzzle kits. This was also 1 week after mskate got back from Friends for Life, which meant I had to move all the stuff from the small car to the minivan at her parents house since they took the van on the trip. Whatever.

We head up on Friday night, and it was super uneventful. On our way up we went to the outlet mall and got some stuff from our favorite stores; crocks for mskate from the crocks store, gold fish crackers for me from the pepridge farm store, and disney princess soaps for mskate from bath and bodyworks. I got special fast food from the restaurant that's by the outlet mall. On our drive up we found a radio station that played 90s to now, which was fun to listen to. We checked into our hotel and got everything unpacked, and checked out the amenities. Something interesting is that they had Boomerang in their cable package. I had ramen for dinner and mskate had easy mac. We made a stop at the camp ground to drop off some 40th anniversary stuff. Because it was the evening the line to check in was super long, so we parked over by the boat launch and had to walk about a mile from the boat launch to where everyone was camping, and because the air was so bad we were doing it in KN95 masks. We kind of just said hello to everyone, dropped the things off, and went back to the hotel. I got some McDonald's after that to finish off the day.

Saturday started off pretty basic, just having continental breakfast at the hotel. We loaded up some stuff to take with us to the camp ground (food cooler some activities). Since it was more early morning and people weren't checking in, we were able to check in no waiting. We had met up with everyone and had some fun with everyone. One of the activities we brought was spot it, and that went over REALLY well. We played that for like 2 hours. For lunch I had a hamburger, and I shared my ketchup with our friends who I used their stove to cook with. We were able to hang out for about 4 hours before we had to go back to the hotel because the air quality was just that uncomfortable.

We hung out at the hotel for a couple hours, just watching boomerang and playing webkins while breathing clean air. Around 4PM we went back to the campsite where we started to get ready for dinner, pizza with the group. Mskate, mom, and I went to get it for everyone. We had a big van that could hold all the orders. We normally got it from a place called BC's pizza, but they closed down and according to my dad, the restaurant was completely leveled, so we got it from a place that was right next to a gun store (and had some jokes about that). Once we got back we divided up the orders to each family by what they ordered. We all ate together and had good fellowship. After dinner I worked on building the fire, just laying the foundation and using up some of the pizza boxes we had. That night we made smores and I brought out the peeps. Those went over really well, because they're marshmallows but with some extra flavor, and they ended up being really great. Mskate and I weren't able to stay very long, because of the air quality, but it was still a fun "make our presence known." When we got back to the hotel we just hung out for a couple hours before going to bed.

It's now Sunday morning, and just kind of our final day. I got some continental breakfast 2 hours before mass, and made a couple of waffles for later. Mass was pretty good, the homily was about a saint that shares the name with one of our camping friends, which was pretty cool. Breakfast was the big thing though. On the Sunday of our vacation we all come together and have a communal breakfast, sharing what we [still] have. I brought freeze dried hashbrowns, spam, ketchup, hot sauce, the 2 waffles from the hotel, and a slice of cheddar cheese. I wasn't exactly sure how popular my things would be, but they all went pretty quickly. Multiple people said "I haven't had spam since I was a kid, this is great to have some again." I put the waffles on the griddle to heat them up, and they basically got picked right when I took them off. I made the hashbrowns kind of late in the breakfast time and mskate said "I don't think people are going to want them," but when I put them out they got picked really quickly. We left after breakfast, and the drive home was pretty uneventful. We got home and I unloaded everything with a little relaxing, and the next day I unpacked everything. Great little time. Well, this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

Pokematic's Annual Thanksgiving and Black Friday Blog, 2025

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.

The Thanksgiving and Black Friday 2024 Blog

Hey everyone, my how time flies, it's already Thanksgiving. I got an email from dogechain saying they were going to shut down completely and I had to back up my wallet or else I'll lose about $100 worth of doge I got back in college. I set-up my old college laptop, installed dogecoin core, and loaded my wallet information into it to import there. This required updating the blockchain, and it's been going for about a week now and isn't even 70% done. Whatever, time for the holiday. This year was kind of different due to my grandpa passing and aunt going to her brother's out of state instead of staying home, and my grandma no longer living independent and having even more mobility problems than normal, but even then a lot of things stayed the same. Wednesday was a normal work day, and then we went to the in-laws for the evening so we would be ready for the fun of the weekend. Pretty basic day, just spent a lot of the evening going through online black friday ads and watching some tv. Got a pretty good list ready. Something that caught my attention was Target selling an XBOX 360 for $75. I called IRA to see it since it was so weird, and he got excited since his 360 red ringed and he wanted a new one. OK add Xbox 360 to the list.

Thursday Thanksgiving day. I bought a news paper to get the black friday ads because I like to have the physical paper, but I think this will be the last time I do this because it didn't have any of the big players like walmart, target, meijer (I'm mid-west), BJs, gamestop, or others and that was kind of the same as last year. Oh well. About 1PM we went to my parents house for the party. Because of nursing home preferences and rules, we had dinner and celebrating a little early. Normally dinner is around 4PM and accordion sing along is around 6PM, but this year we shifted everything forward by about 1.5 hours. The moving is where things got kind of complicated. My grandma had broken her hip earlier this year and it just made it harder to move, and the dementia makes it all the harder to have her move herself properly (don't grab the walker handle, grab the arm rest, I said don't grab the walker handle, OK I guess we're using the walker but don't fight too much when we have to lift your arms). God bless her but it does complicate things by a lot. Dinner was great, ham and green beans for me, everyone else enjoyed that and turkey and stuffing and such. Great meal. Getting grandma back to her chair for the sing along was hard too, but this time we remembered that we had a wheel chair from my grandpa after he passed.

The sing along was fun like always, over the river, apple peaches pumpkin pie, and some other fun songs. After the sing along it was time for desert. Time for some comical problems. The accordion friend likes to bake and always makes a cake and a pie, and she forgot the pie at home; there was some confusion or something and the pie was left on the table in the garage. Whoops, oh well. There was some more visiting and after a while it was time for everyone to leave. Getting my grandma back in the car was a major production. We got her into the wheel chair and just walked her to the back door where it's easier to move, and then we just picked her up in the chair and carried her down the steps, just like what we'd do with my uncle who was always in a wheel chair. Brought back a lot of memories for us. Once we got her in the car we brought up my parent's Christmas decorations and assembled the tree. After that it was a calm early night at the in-laws because IRA and I had black friday shopping to do early in the morning.

OK, now it's the heavy time, early morning shopping. IRA woke me up at 4:30 so we could get to stores when they opened. Basically everything opened at 6AM except for gamestop opening at 5AM, so first stop on our loop was gamestop. We went to one that was somewhat close that had a target really close (same shopping district) at about 5:15, but when we got there they didn't have any of the games I was looking for, and directed us to go to a store that was further away on the rout but not exactly close. Change of plans, went to that store and found 2/3 of the games I was looking for (Hogwarts Legacy and Tomb Raider Anniversary). Score. Afterwards we went to the target that was fairly close and only had to wait in the cold for about 15 minutes. Because there was some big Taylor Swift promotion they had to have an employee come out and give us directions on what the limits are. Wild thing is the employee was someone I went to highschool with, He was one of vikingpolak's friends and I didn't really recognize him (and he didn't remember my first name, just my last), but it was pretty funny. I had no need for the Taylor Swift stuff, but the CD was under $20 and she's really popular right now, so I picked up a copy to try to resell later. I also picked up Kirby Forgotten Land, a pop socket for mom in law, and a bullseye squishmellow for mskate. We couldn't find the squishmellow and so we asked the highschool friend where it was, so that was pretty cool. As for the XBOX, when I asked the employee in electronics he said "we haven't sold xbox 360 in years, we're stopping XBOX ONE even, you'll have to go to a retro store for that." I then said "the ad lied to me, it said you had XBOX 360s for $75." It wasn't a console, it was a megablocks building set. Why the confusion? It shipped in a box that was a replica of the xbox 360 box, looks extremely close to an xbox 360 in a low resolution scan, and comes with a replica copy of halo 3. The employee said "yeah if we had them I'd get one just for nostalgia." Oh well. After Target we went to Walmart, I was looking for the basically half off gaming laptop since I need a new laptop (my current laptop is about 8 years old and is starting to fail, and I want a computer that can actually play all the games I get for free with prime), a cheap dresser unit, and a wire rack. All of them were online deals, dang, that was a waste.

We decided to give one more gamestop a try since I still was looking for roller coaster tycoon adventures delux, and so IRA looked up where the next closest gamestop was. He gave me the directions and when I got close I'm like "wait a minute, I know which gamestop we're going to, it's the gamestop right by where my grandma used to live, we'd go here back when it was funcoland." They had Roller Coaster Tycoon for PS4. I was hoping for switch, but PS4 works for me since I have a PS4. Since we were in a neighborhood I knew, we went to the dollar general that used to be the family video we'd rent movies from on Friday nights. I got us dawn soap, command hooks, pedialyte (mskate needs it for her electrolyte deficiency), and garbage bags. Since it was now like 9AM and were close to where the accordion friend lives, we called to see if they were up and able to give us the pie (they wanted us to have it to share with everyone). They were and we got the pie. After that we went to my grandma's condo just to look around since my mom had the house completely redone (new paint, no carpet, no furniture), and go to the bathroom. It was pretty surreal; it was familiar but completely foreign. Walked the house probably 1 last time. There was one more place, we went to the shopping center about a mile down the road from my grandma's house to go to 5 below to see if we could do the squishmellow $20 bag. They were completely out, it was just something for the first 100 people, but that's OK because we still have a big bag of stuffed animals from other big sales. That was OK though because there was a new retro store in the shopping center and they had some black friday deals. For me it was the buy 2 get 1 free on games, so I picked up 6 PS2 games and IRA got some movies on buy 2 get 2 free. On the way back we stopped at BJs where I got a new TV for the bedroom (our TV was the TV I bought for my dorm room years ago, and it's not very good) and some gift cards on discount (I think it was subway, disney, and uber). Once we got back I unloaded the car and took a nap.

Later in the day mskate wanted to do some shopping with us, and so we went out again in the afternoon. We went to bath and bodyworks, CVS, bjs, and the retro store again (because IRA decided he wanted to get an $80 used xbox 360 from them). At CVS we got a peanuts cookie tin for my dad since he likes Charlie Brown and Snoopy. BJs was just a couple more gift cards and filling gas. When we went to the mall with bath and bodyworks we found a store that was just gochapon. I looked for a machine with figures I would be interested in, but didn't find anything too interesting. IRA decided to though and got a digimon figure. At bath and bodyworks we got soaps and lotions for the moms on buy 3 get 3, and then got hand sanitizers for the workers at grandma's assisted living center. This is when we discovered that IRA didn't have his debit card, meaning he lost it. That was pretty bad, but we retraced our steps and went to the retro store where he last used it. That's where it was, and apparently he wasn't the first to do it. He got his xbox and some more movies, so crisis averted. Rest of the day was pretty low key.

Saturday was a simple day. We went to my grandma's assisted living to get her apartment all decorated and just visit. We already had a little tree set up, but it didn't have a lot of ornaments and we bought some garland to hang on the wall and put some ornaments on it. I'm glad I bought the command hooks because we needed them for the garland. We got it all set up while she was still at lunch, and once it was decorated we brought her to her apartment and just visited. We didn't have a lot to do with her, so I put on the wedding video I made for my cousin (the one we saw in Hawaii earlier this year). She doesn't know him, he's on my dad's side and she's my mom's mom, but she really likes little kids and half the video is just my 2 year old niece-cousin being cute, so it was a great little thing and she especially liked watching the part where we went to Disney Aulani for the character breakfast. After that we just walked her around her floor until it was time for their activity. It was a good little visit. The rest of the day was pretty calm, just unpacking the stuff and trying to find places for it. Later in the evening we went to a drive in theater to watch The Polar Express and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We saw Red One and Elf the week prior, and figured out how to keep warm without turning the car on better than we did that time. It was a good fun time.

Well that was Thanksgiving weekend. Glad I can finally get this out at a reasonable time this year. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.