Happy Thanksgiving--where did the year go?

Ok, so it's not the end of December...yet, but I'm sure the next month is going to fly by faster than I can even imagine!  We've just wrapped up the long Thanksgiving weekend and the notorious black Friday shopping frenzy.  This year, as usual, we headed to my sister's house for the annual feast of turkey, "arroz con gandules" and yummy dessert.  Thank goodness she likes to entertain, because I would be completely lost if I had to try my hand at cooking a turkey.  At the end of the night, the discussion turned to our plans for black Friday.  Aileen decided she wanted to go out THAT NIGHT since most stores are now trying to entice shoppers by opening at midnight on Thanksgiving (or sooner).  I had no desire to go out, but my girls were desperate.  Leena finally convinced me to brave the crowds at Walmart for their 10pm opening.  Yasmeen, Adam and Mohammed were smart, and stayed home, but Leena, Aileen, my Mom, Dad, Elena and me all headed out to see what the hype was about.  THERE WERE CROWDS AND CROWDS OF PEOPLE in line to get into Walmart.  To make matters worse, there wasn't any parking in the HUGE parking lot for the entire mall--and Walmart was the only store open at that time.  Somehow, we lucked out and found parking right up against the entrance, and got in line.  The store employees were on full guard and had actually set up metal guardrails that resembled a line at a popular roller coaster in an amusement park--it was quite a sight!!  So at 10pm, all toys were on sale.  Then at midnight, the electronics went on sale--and can you believe there were people literally sitting in the aisles of the store just waiting to grab a deal on a flat screen tv at the stroke of midnight??!!  No tv in the world is worth that madness.  We browsed the store (getting pushed and shoved along the way by droves of people) and somehow managed to find good deals on some DVDs, a few Wii games and even a very nice, and incredibly priced, rolling desk chair for me.  Nothing out of this world, but it was an adventure nevertheless to get out and see all the crazy folks out there that would do anything for a deal.  Hey, maybe I WAS one of those crazy folks, considering we got into line (a long, long, LOOOOONG line) just to secure our purchases and be able to say that the trip was worth it.

The next day, the actual black FRIDAY, we headed to the mall for Yasmeen, who was desperate to get some clothes at Aeropostale.  Although they did have some good sales, there wasn't much else going on at the mall.  From there, the entire gang headed over to Toys R Us (but when we saw the HUGE line we left everything behind and got back into the van).  Then we had lunch, and headed over to Clinton Honda to look at the Odyssey minivan once again.  Unfortunately, there aren't any "black Friday" deal on cars or vans, so no super sales there.  We did go back and make good on our promise to buy toys after leaving the dealership, and the girls bought dolls while Adam scored a tractor trailer truck (say that 3 times fast) at Toys R Us...once the lines had died down!

It was back to the grind today after an entire week off from work due to the Thanksgiving holiday.  I enjoyed the time off fully as I will be working a full time schedule next month and will be wishing for time off! Work is getting busier, so that makes the days go quicker, but boy am I tired at the end of the day!

The girls are doing great in school. Both Leena and Yasmeen brought home good report cards and our parent/teacher conference with Leena's teacher was stellar.  She actually told us that she gets a gift every year from one of the 3rd grade teachers and that Leena was her gift this year.  So sweet!  Yasmeen's teachers didn't request a conference (a good thing) and her report card was great, too.  Soon her music teacher will be choosing kids to go into the honors and/or Jazz bands (you have to be picked for this) and Yasmeen has a good shot.  Let's keep our fingers crossed for our budding trombone player.

Adam is almost....almost...POTTY TRAINED!  Yep, he took to using his potty seat about 2 weeks ago after seeing his friend use the toilet and has been pretty good about telling me he has "to go".  Of course, he has had a few accidents (like today...when he peed right through his clothes because he was so into getting a slice of cheese, he forgot to tell me he had to go), but overall, he's doing great.  Pooping isn't an issue either, but I'll save that for another time since this is all getting into a bit of too much information :-) Once we've conquered this milestone, we'll need to tackle his "bo-bo" habit.  One step at a time...

Well, I guess that's it...for now...although I will update in a few days with some exciting (to us) news.  You'll have to stay tuned to find out.  Let's just say that Mohammed is taking off a few days this week to use up some of his vacation time before the end of the year...and it's perfect timing!!

Have a great week!!