Tales From BLACK FRIDAY

Most people that read this blog know the one thing Kelly and I can do well is sleep. If we have nothing planned on a Saturday we could easily sleep until noon. So for us to get up early on a vacation day you know it has to be for a special event.

On Black Friday, Kelly and I decided we needed to wait in line at WalMart for a new TV. The store was opening up at 5am and we figured in order to get the TV we should show up by 4:30am. When we pulled into the parking lot we were greeted by a few more people then we anticipated. Here's a picture of our view as we stood in line.

By the time we got to where the TV's were they were gone. Big suprise!

Our back-up plan was a different TV at a different store. We drove there and they weren't open until 8am. We had to kill 2 and a half hours so we went to Ram's Horn for breakfast.

My mom, sister and grandma stopped in to have breakfast before their day of shopping.

We waited in line at the electronic store for about an hour until they opened. When the doors opened it was crazy, not WalMart crazy but crazy. A group of guys were on the hunt for the same TV so I led the pack to what I thought was the TV. We were standing around the supposed TV for a couple minutes when Kelly comes up, looks at the tag and lets us know we are standing around the wrong TV. That was kind of like the whole not asking for directions thing.

When we got up to the sales desk there were people everywhere. It seemed like everyones mood soured too. Kelly and I just smiled and laughed at the whole experience. The manager must have noticed because he gave us $100 off our TV! We couldn't think of any other reason why he'd give us a discount off an already discounted item besides our attitude.

It was one of the strangest days of our lives. We both decided we won't be doing it again!

Has anyone else experienced Black Friday? If so, please share...
Ash

Professor Jack

If you have a minute please go check out Josh's recent post. Very well said!

http://joshgraves.blogspot.com/

Ash

Fall Fun

This weekend I spent what seemed like the majority of it raking leaves. Our backyard has two huge trees and a couple smaller ones...perfect for TPing right Graves, Lindsey's and Corders.

One of the trees is a maple tree that dropped some of the biggest leaves I've ever seen. Before I started raking you couldn't see our yard. It was completely covered with leaves.

I used our leaf blower to gather all the leaves into three piles. Each pile was at least three feet tall and ten feet in diameter. Lots of leaves!

After I got them all organized it hit me...I've got to dispose of them somehow. Bagging would take to long. As would the leaf blower that seconds as a mulcher.

So I did what any man would do, burn them in my wheel barrel.

After burning leaves for about two hours we barely made a dent in one of the piles. So we were on to plan two.

I would like to thank our neighbor Bob who gave me the great idea of running the lawn mower over the leaves. I questioned how you run a mower over such large piles of leaves but he assured me it'd work. So basically I was like a hungry, hungry hippo with my lawn mower.

Like magic the piles shrunk relatively fast. Kelly came through with the mulcher and cleaned up the tiny bits of leaves that remained. What we thought was going to be the longest afternoon of lawn work turned out to be a well spent beautiful fall day.
Ash