Friday I did something I’ve never done before…I got up at 3:30AM on the day after Thanksgiving to go Christmas shopping.  As I said on my Facebook status that morning, being poor makes you do crazy things!  I couldn’t afford the luxury of spending regular price on Christmas gifts this year…the budget is miniscule compared to years past and we wanted to get as much as we could.  All 3 kids got left with my mom while my husband and I braved the stores.  We were in Knoxville, so had all kinds of retail options which was nice.  I do miss having that in Sanford!

Our first stop was Walmart.  We had told our son that if he truly wanted a Nintendo DS that he could use the money he’d saved to buy one.  That was our Christmas present to him.  A little sneaky and probably not a great move, but it was the only way we could afford to get him something that he really wanted.  So when I saw that Walmart would have DS Lites for $98 on Black Friday they came first on my plan of attack.  We got in line at about 4:15AM and got one of the last tickets available for that item.  At 5AM the line started moving quickly and by 5:05AM we had a red Nintendo DS Lite in our hands.  I had already been to the toy section to see if any of the other items on our list were on sale but they weren’t, so we headed to the checkout immediately.  Along with EVERYONE else in the store.  It was a madhouse.  It probably took a good 45 minutes to get checked out.  While my husband stood in line I grabbed a couple of other things…breastpads (because it was time to nurse Violet but she was at my mom’s house, thus I had a minor problem) and chocolate covered cherries, my mom’s favorite treat.  We got checked out (FINALLY!) and headed to Kohl’s for 50% off Fisher Price toys.

Once we got to Kohl’s, we saw that their checkout line was wrapped around the entire store.  I directed my husband to go stand in it and headed for the toy section.  I had a list of things I wanted to get for Violet that included a Fisher Price tea set, a purse, and a princess hooded towel.  I found them all, along with some stocking stuffers and hooded towels for the boys, a couple of DS games, a dragon set for my younger son, and a pastel girly shape sorter for Violet.  We spent almost our entire budget there, but got it all for about half regular price.  Can’t beat that!

We were checked out by 7AM and thought we’d stop at a couple more stores, just to see if we could find anything else we were looking for on sale.  We couldn’t, so we headed back to my mom’s house.  We were back there by about 8AM and pretty much done with the Christmas shopping.  I have to say…it was a little bit of a rush saving so much money even though I had to drag myself out of the nice warm bed at a time that I’m usually deep in dreamland.  I have a few more things I have to get and then when my mom gets here I’m taking her to buy gifts for the kids.

We’ll have toys under the tree this year.  Maybe not as many as in years past, but that’s OK…it will give us a chance to focus more on the real reason for the holiday.  And maybe, in the coming years, we can remember this year and how happy the kids were with less stuff.