Holiday Weekend - Long Recap

It’s been a very active past week (plus a few days). It’s also going to be a very long post and I might ramble. But if you’ve been here you know me. J

It started off on the 22^nd of November when Thomas and I headed to Disneyland with one of his cousins’ (and his cousins’ new bride). His cousin started working for Disney recently and with that comes unlimited entrances to the park (except for December, which is blocked out – boo!). I had mentioned to the couple back in October that I had been wanting to go to Disneyland for the Christmas season to check out all the lights and decorations, so they agree to take us.

Since I mostly wanted to see the decorations we headed there around noon. We got there in time to go see the Aladdin show – which is basically Broadway quality. It’s a condensed version of the movie, lasting only 45 minutes. The Genie steals the show with some comedy in just about every seen. Some characters are removed, in this case Abu and the Rajah. When I had seen it in the past they had Abu in it. (Oops, forgot to mention that the show is actually at CA Adventure, not Disneyland).

After the show we walked around CA Adventure and went on just one ride, CA Soaring. The lines were very long and my husband and his cousin are not line waiters. It was dark by the time we headed over to Disneyland. We arrived just as the parade was taking place and got to enjoy seeing some of that as we made our way deeper into the park. We got to go on It’s A Small World, Indiana Jones, and the Haunted Mansion (I think I’m leaving something out).

The lights were spectacular as you can see by a few pictures that weren’t craptastic:

Thursday was spent, obviously, with family. I was a crappy cook and forgot to defrost the puff pastry that I had bought for my Leek Tart so I had nothing to contribute to Thanksgiving, but that was ok. There was plenty of food and leftovers to go around. Thomas and I left around 4pm, after the traditional prayer and family picture.

It was nice talking to some people that we don’t always talk to.

After we left I ended up vegging out for a while before heading to Black Angus with my parents for dinner. At first Thomas was going to go, then he said he wouldn’t, and finally he said he would. We had7:30pm reservations but were seated closer to 7:45pm. Dinner was a disaster! The restaurant has a 2 for $41 deal so each couple decided to take advantage. The deal includes 1 appetizer, 2 entrees, and a dessert. We ordered the chicken tenders and the artichokes for appetizers. Which they messed up on. They brought a sampler platter and the artichokes. A manger finally came by and we told him the mistake and so they brought out the chicken tenders. At this point Thomas had complained twice that the Sprite he ordered didn’t have any syrup.  He finally had to tell the manager that that was the problem.

Thomas and my mom both ordered salads as one of their sides and my dad had a soup. They were all brought AFTER the main course.  By that point they had already tried to bring us another order of artichokes. Thomas was over it and wanted to just leave. My mom was as well. I was a little more sympathetic, but it was ridiculous.

We decided that we’d wait to do Black Friday shopping on, well, Friday. I was able to find some good deals – which I won’t mention here because there might be prying eyes. My mom and I had a lot of fun going from store to store. I have to say that Kohl’s, once again, was the best (and I’m not even getting anything out of that). We had a $10 off $10 and a $5 off $5, then we had 2 $10 off $25 and 15% off coupons. We split our purchases into two $25 ones and were able to combine the 3 different coupons. For a total of $24 spent we saved over $200!

On Saturday I convinced Thomas to go with me to a Christmas Tree Farm about 20 minutes away….. and that will have its own post!

Basically we did a lot of shopping and Christmas decorating. My house is starting to look really nice. Here is a sneak peak:

Why I Went Out Shopping on Thanksgiving

I’ve read a lot of articles and blog posts about why people shouldn’t shop on Thanksgiving. Mostly they talk about how Thanksgiving is a family holiday and not a shopping holiday. People should be sitting around the dining room table enjoying turkey and watching football. Enjoying quality time together.

Which is perfectly ok.  I love that people do that. I love the togetherness.

But not everyone does and I think it isn’t right for me to impose what I think the holiday should be like on those people.

The argument continues that the workers are not at home but instead they are forced to work. Except, do we know that they are all forced to work? Maybe some, even many, of them want to work because it means extra money for Christmas shopping. Maybe that same employee will be out the next day partaking in Black Friday.

One of the things that comes to mind when I hear the argument about people having to work on Thanksgiving instead of being home with their families is all the people who we depend on working that day and any and all other holidays all year long.

Emergency room doctors and nurses. Police can’t take days off (even if it makes a good movie). And if firefighters and paramedics took the day off what would we do when people make fried turkeys and burn themselves? Or someone breaks their leg during some flag football? I’m sure many doctors, nurses, fire fighters, police officers, etc etc would love to have the holidays off, too. But they can’t.

What about the UPS/FedEx drivers that work on holidays to make sure that we all get those presents that we bought the day before Thanksgiving? They work on Christmas Eve to get you those presents on time. Should we give them the day off?

Not to mention grocery stores. They are typically open for at least a few hours on Thanksgiving.

My parents were going to be alone this Thanksgiving and didn't want to cook. So we went to dinner last night. My family is grateful they were open to feed us some dinner.

Sometimes people have to work on days they don’t want to work. It happens. But if they are working they are making money, they aren’t doing it for free.