Thanksgiving!!

Oh, did we feast!  We pulled off the annal Rudlaff Family Thanksgiving in Ohio again this year.  It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.  I started baking about 4 or 4:30 on Wed. and Joel’s brother Kent and family arrived around 9:30.  Poor Lisa was sooo sick!  Thursday morning Kent took her to the ER and I rather calmly got the turkey going (it was too big for the grill this year – rats!), and pressed Rachel (Joel’s niece) and Karra into service where necessary.  Lisa had a really bad sinus infection, so the ER piled her up with meds.  There were only 11 of this year for the meal.  Joel’s Mom stayed home to rest and rejuvinate (the ride down can be really hard on her) and Joel’s other brother Kyle drove down late on Thursday (they spent the day with Morgan’s family).  So, we ate and ate and put away the leftovers and sat down with the sale flyers.

We mapped out our route and discussed store opening times and discovered that we would need to get Morgan from the hotel at 3:15.  They ended up arriving at 9:30 Thursday night.  Kent fetched Aunt Morgan for us and Rachel, Karra, Morgan, Lisa and Fletcher set off to conquer the stores on Black Friday!

We opened at Kohl’s and stood in the very confused check-out line for an hour and then discovered that I had carried the wrong Kitchen-Aid mixer around the store for 2 hours.  The one I had wanted was long gone by then!  Oh, well.  God didn’t want me to have a Kitchen-Aid this year.  I’ll live.  We got into the short check-out at Target and only waited about half an hour.  The coup de gras came at Filene’s Basement.  I’d dropped off Morgan, Lisa and Rachel to do some clothes shopping while Karra and I ran to JoAnn’s and PetSmart.  We walked into Filene’s and they gave us a scratch off coupon.  We set off to find the family when Rachel burst out of the clothes and said, "Aunt Fletcher, my scratch off coupon was to get $300 free!!"  We were amazed.  When all was said and done, Rachel had several nice shirts and a purse and some ipod accessories, Aunt Morgan had a beautiful new coat (to replace one that she had given her brother’s girlfriend – God is sooo good), and Miss Karra had a beautiful zip up jacket to wear to dance.

Then, we got home to drop off things and pick up the coupons Fletcher forgot, and Aunt Lisa got sick.  She stayed home and the rest of us headed to the mall.  We agreed to meet in front of Macy’s when we split up.  Fletcher forgot that there are two Macy’s stores in our mall!!  We eventually found each other again and ended our Black Friday adventure.  We didn’t get as many bargains as we have in the past, but we experienced such wonderous highs and lows.

I so enjoy the family coming and rising sooo early to go shopping together.  It gives us much to be thankful for when we can gather (and leave the kids with the men for a day!)

TTFN  Fletcher