NEVER AGAIN and other stuff

Never again will I go out shopping the day after Thanksgiving. A friend was heading out and I asked if I could join her because I'd never seen the craziness at all the big shopping spots before. Once I decided to go I also decided to make it a productive time and actually get some presents so I perused the ads and mapped out my stores. We both missed our alarms but still got out of the house before 6am. We were going to meet up around 6:30 at Target. I headed to Shopko, walked to the toy section, saw that nothing was left of what I wanted, saw that the line went to the back of the store, then extended to a back corner and decided to leave. I parked extremely far away from Target when meeting my friend. While getting out I realized I did not have my purse. I headed back to Shopko without much hope of finding it. I found a parking spot very far away and headed to the customer service counter. Some honest and kind soul actually turned it in with everything left inside. I realized I had been so mad leaving Shopko the first time that I walked out and left my purse sitting in the cart. I should have slept in longer. I found myself getting very angry at the stores for their misleading advertising (item on huge discount yet they only stock 3 of them) but soon realized it was my fault for getting sucked into it all. I headed for Home Depot and Michael's where I enjoyed shopping without lines and got a few things on sale. My friend and I finally met up at 8:30 at Starbuck's after we had both had enough of it all. Never again will I shop on that day. I think I'll let my friend do the shopping and she can call me when she's done so we can meet for breakfast next year.

We had a great Thanksgiving day. Our church has an annual football game in the morning so we went to watch Andy play a little in that, but it was freezing so we left for home before the game was over. Andy and I put lights on our roof in the rain. I was quite a site out decorating in my pink polka dot rain boots with my goretex camo jacket on. We got down, plugged them in to see how they looked and hated them so three days later we took them down and hung different ones. We had dinner with good friends and were only responsible for providing the fruit salad which was great with me. After an afternoon feast and some great pie we all sat down to watch "Cars" and then headed home for bed.

Unfortunately, while we were enjoying the weekend and getting in the holiday spirit tragedy struck several families we know. I grieve deeply for these families, especially the young children affected by everything, but I also know, without a doubt, that God is good, sovreign and ruthless in His agenda. All we need is His love. That won't make the pain go away for these friends, but it will see them through. For any of you inclined to pray please pray for these grieving families and the children trying to make sense out of their new lives that will need to redefine "normal."