what we did on our thanksgiving vacation.

it has becomee a ruggles' family tradtion to go camping during thanksgiving break. sometimes it works out that we are able to join art's parents and go out in the wilderness. ok . . . it really isn't that bad. there is a camper involved and the kiddos sleep with grammy and poppy.

caleb and baileigh love being outside. last year caleb mastered the big boy bike with no training wheels and this year baleigh ditched the tricycle. they prolly put a thousand miles on them in the few days we were there.


this year the whole family was together. on thanksgiving we actually had dinner outside in lawn chairs. you might be a redneck if . . . it was sort of a potluck dinner with several families getting together for the holiday.

after dinner, it was down to business. we brought out the newspapers and went to work planning our shopping trip for the next day. we made lists and checked them twice. after all sales ads had been studied and studied again we decided on who would go where and what time. i decided on 'best buy' , angie 'circut city' and allison 'target'. once the kids were somewhat settled and the sun went down angie, allison and i headed out so get some real rest for our busy day.

at 2:39AM my alarm went off and i hoped in the shower hopeing to get to best buy at 4:00. i was leaving vidor after fueling the van at 3:40 AM. when i got there the line was around the back side of the building. i wasn't really surprised. some of the people had been in line since 1:30 on thursday. the doors opened at 5:00 and by 5:10 i was stand ing in another line inside waiting on cameras. at 6:05 i walked away with a video camera, digital camera& mp3 player. then it was off to target to meet up with angie and allison. it was pretty busy there but shopable. we all ended up with a few things then it was off to the next place. 7:30 am we were at the mall having breakfast at chick fil a. after refueling and planning for our next stops we were at it again. by 11:00 we had shopped til we dropped and decided to call it a day. but first we needed more fuel. hummm . . . . crazy jose!!!! we ate like we skipped breakfast.

after all is said and done i think we did pretty good. we at least put a dent in the holiday shopping for 2006. thank you angie and allison for a great day. i'm looking forward to our girls weekend for more shoping til we drop.


jess :-P