The holidays!

As I am constantly reminded, I don’t update my blog enough… Though, I would like to point out that a month and a half is sooner than the two and a half months that last time took! So… I’m getting better! Slowly, but surely. Right now, I just don’t think I have anything interesting to say, but I’ll give it a shot!

The holidays are finally winding down, and it can’t come soon enough for me! My holiday craziness this year really started on Black Friday. Before that, we were mostly just prepping for the insanity that was to come – and Black Friday was just that, INSANE! I got into work at 2am to make sure everything was set up and working for the 4am opening. There were already people there waiting in line! Some had been waiting overnight! Okay, my family is all about bargain shopping. In fact, the girls’ philosophy of shopping is, “Friends don’t let friends buy retail.” But it is SO not worth staying out overnight in freezing temperatures to go shopping.

I’ll even let you in on a little retail secret… **most** of the Black Friday items will be on almost the same sale price at some point during the holiday season- you just have to watch the ads. Black Friday was all that it was built up to be, and more! By the time we opened the doors at 4, the line was wrapped around Gold’s Gym. For those of you who haven’t seen where my store is located in relation to Gold’s gym, it’s a block or so. We had 10 registers in the front of the store running, along with the 3 at customer service, and ALL of them were running until 3 or so. We had 2 lines going for the registers, and it wrapped around the inside of the store where it met up again. Though, I must admit, according to most of our customers I talked to as they walked out, the wait wasn’t too bad at all, not nearly the wait time they had expected and we were also amazingly organized. That was really nice to hear after all of the work that went into making sure it flowed as easily as possible.

Black Friday was definitely the earliest morning of the season- though there were many days of being in at work by 4am or getting out at 1am or later… Can I just say I hate holiday hours?

So, everything is starting to wind down and be back to normal soon… At least that’s what they keep telling me… Just a few more days of return hell and we’re done! When I say return hell, I mean return hell. I was talking to one of my customer service associates last night, and he made a comment about my Facebook status from last week. I put that Christmas was good, and return hell was starting. He didn’t realize how serious I was. Most days we have 3-4 return registers running at customer service… This translates to a lot of stuff coming back in! Saying it’s a mess is horribly understating it… Here’s a picture I took last night of just the front part of customer service…

This doesn’t include the 25 z-rails of clothes in the back, 10 denim carts, and multiple shopping baskets that are in the back. I had Kyle stand in so you could kind of get an idea of the height of this stack… I wish I had taken another picture from the other side so you could see how wide it was… There’s probably another good 3-4 feet of stuff stacked behind him at that same height… That was as far back as he could get. Thankfully, tomorrow morning we have 25 people scheduled just to work on getting all of this stuff hung, sorted and put back onto the floor.

So, onto something not work related… I had a good break. On the 23^rd we had the extended family over for a dessert buffet. It was really fun to get to see everyone. I haven’t gotten to see much of the extended family and the grandparents lately-especially since we didn’t have Thanksgiving at our place this year. It was so much fun! I have really missed talking to everyone, especially my grandparents. Howard and Mary Sue (believe…) found an old picture of Grandma about the time that she married Grandpa. They had it restored, colorized and framed. Grandpa is usually a very serious and gruff person. It was a very sweet and tender moment when he pulled out the picture and told everyone that none of them had a more beautiful wife than he, and how lucky that he was to get her and love her for all these years. He even started tearing up, though he wasn’t the only one. It was wonderful to see the love that they still have for each other… I hope someday I can have a wonderful and loving marriage like they do.

Christmas Eve was another night of family fun, though this one was more the immediate family. I opened Christmas Eve so I was able to be with the family for ALL of the Christmas Eve fun. We’ve started a new tradition of having soup in bread bowls for dinner, read the Christmas story out of the bible, watching some form of a Christmas movie- last year it was A Christmas Story, this year it was A Muppet Christmas Carol- and finishes with the kids all decorating sugar cookies and opening their Christmas pj’s. It was a wonderful night, though I have to admit, the sugar cookies weren’t nearly as amusing as last year. Last year, Tanner and Ashley stacked 2 inches of frosting and sprinkles on the cookies-and even funnier with they wanted Hans to eat the cookie! J This year, we were also treated to Amanda and Lisa’s choreographed version of the “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas/Pinecones and Holly Berries” duet. Quite the treat. They were even nice enough to do it twice so Russell and Jodee could see it over Ichat. Technology is wonderful! It was so fun to get to talk to Russell and Jodee for a bit, get to see the boys and include them in some of the holiday fun even though they are so far away.

Quite possibly the funniest moment of the night was Tanner when he was opening his present… Okay, not quite possibly, it was DEFINITELY the funniest moment of the night. Tanner didn’t realize that the present he was opening was the pajamas that Tasha gets for the kids every year, he was thinking it was a **real** present. I missed the actual opening, but got to see Hans’ re-enactment that was apparently right on. He started tearing through the packaging and throwing around tissue paper because he was so excited!! … And pulled out pajamas…. Saying he was disappointed is an understatement. “Pajamas! Aww…” and threw them to the ground. Oh how I wish I had taped Hans’ re-enactment! This will definitely go down in Hortin tradition, along with the, “Is that all?!?” of Russell’s youth.

So that’s my entry for today! Apparently I can think of a lot to ramble on about… though I’m not sure how interesting it all is to whoever actually reads this… In just over a week I’m going to see Russell, Jodee, Calvin and Wesley, so hopefully I’ll have some fun stories to tell from there!