On Thursday afternoon, Andzelika and I left for the States at around 4pm to head to Birch Run for some Black Friday deals. We left early in an effort to avoid the line ups at the border, assuming that most people would be going shopping after work. We got to the border around 5:30 and there was NO wait at all!! We got little hassle on the way over and headed straight to Birch Run to grab some supper.
Since it was about 6:30pm on Thursday of Thanksgiving for the US, EVERYTHING was closed in the area of the shopping outlets in Birch Run. We drove around a bit and asked the GPS for restaurant suggestions, but the only restaurant that we could see that was open was Bob Evans. Did you know that Bob Evans does not serve any alcohol? Unfortunately, we learned this during this supper outing. But to make up for them having no alcoholic beverages, they did have turkey supper (and I thought I was way beyond Thanksgiving!). So we got turkey with mashed potatoes, stuffing, and biscuits, plus a peanut butter chocolate brownie for supper, all for under $15! I always get stuck on the restaurant pricing in the States. We lingered in the restaurant for a bit before venturing out to the stores, which we could see from the window of the restaurant. Some of the stores opened as early as 7pm! We found a parking spot (which became more and more difficult as the night progressed) and began our shopping.
I cannot believe how many people are out shopping at this time! We went through several outlet stores, I bought all Christmas gifts (but not too much money.. about $100) and Andzelika bought things for the girls. Amazing prices! If it was just 20% off, we didn't even give the store a chance (clearly we want 50-75% off!!). At about 2:30am, we decided that we needed to pump more caffeine into our bodies since we were starting to feel it. They do have vendors set up in between stores that sell coffee at tables, but the coffees were a little smaller than what we were looking for (and we had one of those earlier in the evening). Starbucks was right across the road.
I found these napkins on the table where we sat. I thought this was really unusual because it was my perception that the people who were occupying starbucks that night were not the usual clientele as I observe during the day (the outlet shopping seemed to bring a diverse crowd). And particular orders aren't all that bad if they are meaningful (I drink soy because milk makes my stomach upset not because it's a fad). I wasn't too sure exactly why starbucks people were being stereotyped on napkin, and I have seen some of these characteristics in the past but I don't think that its a fitting stereotype because of the diverse crowd, students, and people who support fairtrade who choose starbucks.
Our 2:30am beverages (lattes) and my cranberry bliss bar (an attempt for some additional sugar energy). We tried to get ourselves motivated to get back into the groove of shopping, and ended up sitting for about an hour. Then we headed back to a couple more stores that we had missed in the outlet mall.
We finished up at Birch Run just past 3:30am, and it was time to head to Babies R Us for Andzelika's annual stock up of diapers and wipes that are crazy cheap on black Friday ($10 for diapers, $5 for wipes). We went to the Babies R Us in Flint, which is handy because there are some department stores in the area if we wanted to do more shopping!
We were super early for Babies R Us when we first got there at 4am, so I quickly popped into Wal Mart (but they didn't have what I was looking for because I'm sure they had a rush at midnight who cleaned them out of the sale items!). We got in line at Babeis R Us at 4:30am. It was frickin cold. Brrrrrrrr. Andzelika went over "the plan" with me a couple of times, which I didn't really understand the importance of until they opened the doors at 5am. The plan was for both of us to grab a cart and for me to head to diapers, and Andzelika would take wipes. At 5am when they opened the doors, everyone practically ran to the back of the store directly to the wipes and began to stack the boxes into their cart. I had to step over a lady who was taking about 10 boxes at once to get the mere 2 boxes that I managed to fight people off for. People are friggin crazy for their wipes. The people behind us in this line surely didn't get any boxes of wipes since they were gone within 30 secs. This is the madness that people get injured over!! All of a sudden for about 5 minutes I got an energy boost so that I could grab wipes. Andzelika bought a ton of diapers (probably 10 boxes) and 2 boxes of wipes... although the intention was for many more!
After our Babies R Us craziness, we headed to one last store: Kohls before heading home (where I got some really cute Christmas travel mugs for $3.50 each!). We were in Kohls at around 6am!! It was beginning to get a little tired so we decided that was going to be the last store. We grabbed some breakfast at McDonalds and coffees at 6:30am, then headed toward the boarder... straight for our beds!! The man passing the border on the way back was not very nice and made us give him our receipts, and challenged Andzelika that diapers were cheaper in Canada. But he did let us through with no duty (we only had about $150 combined anyways!), and one more thing.. NO wait on the way back either (literally, not even a car in front). And I got back home around 10am, and slept all day until 5!
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