It’s a tradition every year that we go out shopping on Black Friday.  Last year, Ashley was a newborn so I opted out and stayed home with our sweet baby girl.  She was too little to take out in the madness and was eating too often for me to leave her behind.  But this year, GAME ON!!

Jenn was in DC, so it was just Mom and I.  Dad, our chauffeur, usually drives us around, dropping us off at the front door.   Talk about top notch service!  But he and Van stayed home with Ashley this year.  4:00AM came bright and early.  Our first stop was Kohl’s.  Ah, Kohl’s.  It was crowded, considering it was only 4:00 in the morning, but not bad at all.  We got a few things and waited in line maybe 2 seconds.  Perfect.  We stopped by Starbucks on our way to Streets at Southpoint.  Thank you peppermint mocha!  Traffic was pretty light on I-40 at 6:00 in the morning   We were there for 4 hours.  We went to several stores but spent most of our time in Baby Gap.  Baby Gap was my deal of the day.  We just happened upon it.  Which made it even better since it wasn’t a planned stop.  They were running a 50% off special for the ENTIRE store until 10:00 AM.  SCORE!  Got lots of cute things there.  My absolute favorite was a pair of pink furry boots (see above)!

Mom’s deal of the day was Build a Bear.  She got a cute gift for both Ashley and Finley.  It was fun watching Mom buy two of everything.  You can tell she is so proud of her grandbabies!  The grandma in line in front of us bought 7 bears!  Geesh, we have a lot of work to do Jenn

We also went to Buy Buy Baby and the Carter’s outlet.  We stopped back by Kohl’s on the way home to return some things since I bought so much at Baby Gap.  And were home just in time for lunch.  We spent 8 hours shopping.  Crazy!  We got some good deals though and had lots of fun.  Plus, it was a good excuse to spend some quality time with Mom!

Our room was not ready when we got there, despite having been guaranteed an early check-in at 2:00 p.m.  I had requested an early check-in so I could nurse Ashley and get her settled in the room before I had to work the convention.  So much for that.  We had to wait 2 hours for our room!  Then we had a bad experience with room service and weren’t given what was advertised on their menu.  Oh, and the crib they were supposed to set up in our room ended up being a used pack-n-play that probably hadn’t been disinfected in the past year.  Thank goodness we brought our own so Ashley didn’t have to sleep in the hotel’s germy one.  Yuck!

But even with a few hotel annoyances, our trip was a lot of fun!  Mom got some good quality time with her granddaughter, and I was able to work the convention without worrying about her.  On my time off, we went to The Market Common and did some strolling, shopping, and had lunch.  It was so hot that day!  It was a pretty place to walk around.  We also took Ashley to the kiddie pool at the hotel.  She had fun splashing around!

This was Ashley’s first hotel stay and it was quite an experience.  It was a challenge getting her to sleep at night, and she didn’t like riding in the crowded elevator.  But she loved strolling around the hotel looking at all the new people and sights.  She’s such a ham, too.  She soaks all the attention right up!  Overall, she did really good adjusting to the new environment.  It was a fun trip but we are looking forward to seeing our boys again! 

We then went to Calabash for a late dinner and ate at Capt. Nance’s Seafood.  It was so yummy!  I wanted to get our pictures taken out on the dock but decided to wait until after we ate.  Well, by that time it was dark out so the pictures didn’t turn out very good.  Oh well.  You can’t tell it, but there was a shrimp boat behind us in the pictures.  We ate at 8:00 p.m. and got back home around 10:00 p.m.  Ashley fell asleep on the way home.  We were all pooped!