me2

Flowers. Have them delivered on Christmas day, if possible, Christmas Eve if not.

Legos, duplos, and maybe transformers for the boys. You can't go wrong with legos, particularly the bionicles. Pop-up books. There are some terrific pop-up books out there in a variety of themes. Some of them are very detailed. Spinning suckers. It sounds silly, but my son absolutely loves those things. They have them at Walmart or Target. The base either spins the sucker or, years ago, my daughter had one that played music. You could only hear it when the sucker was up against your teeth. Recorders or Harmonicas. The parents will hate you, the boys will love them.

Phone cards and regional junk food as stocking stuffers.

For the 12 y.o., room decorations. Lava lamps. Bulletin board, fuzzy pillows, matching comforter/curtain combination, funky mirror. 5 y.o., remote control anything with simple controls.

searched for several items online. The comforter sets are already the same price, and the slot machine bank is actually currently CHEAPER than it supposedly will be on Black Friday. What a flop.

I say give it to him. But it's hard to tell what his reaction will be. My guess is that if he's in preschool, he'll probably like it, but if he's hit Kindergarten, he might not. Ds would have been o.k. with a cabbage patch boy last year, but this year he at the idea of a DOLL. This is the same boy who has been dressed up and pestered into playing Pretty Pretty Princess by his sisters for years.

Lame attempt at mean spirited humor. Poor vocabulary. Repetitive use of the Anglo-Saxon synomyn for excrement. And worst of all - boring. THIS, otoh, is definitely funny. http://www.notwithoutmyhandbag.com/babynames/

Yo-yo. Rubik's cube. Any of those little brain teaser puzzle sets. Jigsaw puzzle. Card games like Uno. Checkers. Chess. Chinese Checkers. Those little handheld electronic game thingies - I think they're around 4.99 at Walmart.

PLAY-DOH! My daughter loved play-doh.

LOL I show 'em I care by not buying them an X Box at all. In fact, we don't have a single, solitary game system (other than the computer) in our house. Even funnier, we only have ONE TELEVISION! And yeah, it is by choice. We've given away the old television every time we've bought a new one.

KMart is the only store that carries vacuum cleaner bags for my ancient, but still very functional, vacuum. I go about once a year and buy all they have, figuring they too will someday stop carrying them. Other than that yearly pilgrimage, I never, ever go to KMart. The store is dirty. The employees are rude. The customers are strange. And even if they do advertise a terrific price on something I want, they never, ever, have it.

I picked up three of those pens for my kids' stockings, and they're 5, 9 and 14. I thought they were really cute and I know the kids will love 'em.

Lottery. Hand out tickets and draw names for the chance to purchase a laptop. You have to be present to win. It would end camping out, fights and all the rest of it because there would be no point. I think it's only a matter of time until advertising a sale and then stocking only 15 laptops is outlawed anyway. I think the stores should be required to have a reasonable stock on hand, or else give rain checks. Of course if that happened you wouldn't see these $350 laptops, because the stores count on attracting 600 people at 5 a.m. but they only figure on losing money on a lousy 15 laptops.

If you have time, stop by Walmart and check again today. Some of the things that were tossed aside when the herds thundered through have reappeared on the shelves. I stopped in a different Walmart today to pick up some pop and saw fly wheels, hot wheels, two care bears up on a shelf, and some of the cheap leap pad books.

I had the nicest experience at Walmart today. I was I didn't want any of the hot electronics items, so I hesitated even going to pick up my little deals. I woke up at 4 a.m. It was raining HARD. I didn't feel like fighting so I rolled over and went back to sleep. Woke up at 5:20. Decided to go anyway. I pulled into the absolutely full parking lot just after 6, saw a parking spot waaay out in the boonies and parked. Turns out the garden center doors were open, so I waltzed right in. :) Grabbed a basket, left the cart, you can't get through the aisles with it anyway. Grabbed a 5.00 Hot Wheels track. Saw TWO Care Bears in a box on the floor. Snagged those. Found the fly wheels. Grabbed a pack of those. Passed up the light sabers. Asked a couple employees if there were any more Care Bears - they were polite, helpful, apologetic and suggested I look around and see if someone dumped one somewhere. They showed me where the 6.88 Leap Pad books were, found two of those that I wanted. Around that time I saw an arm reach out and place a Care Bear on a pile of movies. I maneuvered my way through, grabbed it, and headed back. Found two polite if very slow employees checking customers out in Sporting Goods. Only THREE people ahead of me! O.k., so I was small peanuts, but I was pretty pleased. Didn't stand in line. Wound up with everything I wanted, and everyone I met was polite.

The 20 questions game is a blast. I bought the smaller version for a car trip last summer and it occupied a 13 y.o. , a 9 y.o. and a 5 y.o. for hours.

FRYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

FRYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm too scared to go there on Black Friday, but that's one store my husband will hit for me!

IPOD, mp3 player or a digital camera. I have a 9 y.o. and a 14 y.o. girls. Most of the boys love computer games and tech stuff, and some of the girls do too, but it really depends on the girl.

I second the suggestion to skip the Power Wheels. IMO, they're a waste. If it were me, I'd buy something like this - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0002HZPVK/qid=1131905901/br=1-11/ref=br_lf_t_11//102-4751634-3564916?v=glance&s=toys&n=171654 or http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005UOS5/qid=1131906028/br=1-3/ref=br_lf_t_3//102-4751634-3564916?v=glance&s=toys&n=171654 or http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000A40V7S/qid=1131906111/br=1-14/ref=br_lf_t_14//102-4751634-3564916?v=glance&s=toys&n=171654 Actually looks really cool. Any of them would be on the cheap side of a power wheels. The power wheels don't go that fast. They don't help with coordination or strength. And they break. But I'm biased. I wouldn't buy power wheels for any of my kids. We were lucky, when I was 1 I was given a Murray fire truck. It lives in my living room, and that steel behemoth is what my kids rammed into walls.

The year Tickle Me Elmo was big I mentioned to my MIL that I thought it would be a cute gift for our 2 year old, until I realized how crazy people were over it. She lived in a small town, and sometimes things pop up there, so I asked her to pick one up if she happened to see one. I told her not to go to any trouble for it though, it was no big deal. My MIL was absolutely not a shopper, but she heard that they were going to have a few of those Tickle Me Elmos at Walmart on Black Friday. She stood in line for an hour before the store opened, and they gave out tickets. She was 13 of 15. She had difficulty walking, particularly after standing in the cold like that, but she took her ticket and headed towards the back of the store to pick up Tickle Me Elmo. It took her quite a while, she told me they kept announcing "#13 you need to get back here or we'll give it to the next customer!!". She just kept limping back yelling "I'm coming! I'm coming!". She got that Tickle Me Elmo. I felt bad that she went to so much trouble. I wouldn't have wanted her to stand out in the cold like that. My MIL is gone now, and I still miss her. She was truly one of the most wonderful people I ever knew.

Yeah! And thank you again!!

It would be wonderful if someone could post a pdf link version of this as was done for the Walmart ad. For whatever reason these can't be opened from my computer. Thank you though!!!

Dh has been making fun of me for the whole Black Friday thing - but yesterday he asked me if the Frys ad has come out. So FRYS!

I have a 14 y.o., a 9 y.o. and a 6 y.o. They all three played with those swords for months. My husband couldn't believe that I actually bought them. I told him FIFTY CENTS. What can I say, I'm cheap. <g>