>So...I've decided that all the craziness about day after thanksgiving shopping is just made up by news stations because they have nothing else to report. Or they're too lazy to come up with anything else.

I wish that were true around here. We took Jonathan to the mall (Sears, specifically) to get a family portrait taken yesterday. We had to park "out in the boonies" after circling for several minutes without finding anything. The mall was more crowded than I have ever seen it in my entire life. Pushing a stroller was a daunting task, and since one cannot take a stroller up an escalator, getting to the second floor was equally difficult. The mall has no centrally-located elevator; you must walk to one end. We arrived at the Sears photo studio around 12:30, and the place was packed. It must have been "take your baby to get his picture taken day." You can imagine the cacophany. They told us to come back in 45 minutes. We did, and they scheduled us for a 3:00 sitting. We tried to find a table in the food court, but that task proved impossible, so we dared to leave the mall and get lunch, risking the possibility that we would not have a place to park upon our return. Fortunately, the Good Lord smiled on us and we found a spot close to where we were parked before when we got back. Of course, we arrived fifteen minutes early for our 3:00 sitting, and they took us at 3:30. We got a nice family shot, but Jonathan did *not* cooperate for the shots of just him, and we ended up getting only one good one out of many attempts. We were thankful for the one. We were thankful to be done. We were thankful to escape the mall with our lives and sanity intact.

Gri"mall-scarred"shny