Growing up I would always beg my mom to wake me up at 4:30 the morning after Thanksgiving to go Black Friday shopping. We host Thanksgiving at my house every year and my mom spends the majority of the three days prior to Thursday cooking for my family and my extended family. The fact that she even entertained my grand plan of waking up that early to go to the local mall is incredible. But for about six years she would wake me up and we'd go shopping...my poor mom. Even if it didn't end up being what I anticipated, here is why Black Friday shopping with my mom was still incredible.

First of all, I had this preconceived idea in my head that every single thing in all of the stores would be more than half off and I could throw whatever I wanted into the shopping cart no matter what. This did happen, for the most part, however, I think it was just the fact that my mom was half asleep wandering the aisles of ULTA at 6 a.m. and wasn't paying attention to what I was doing.

Second, all of the stores I wanted to go to didn't open earlier than 6 a.m. so for the first few years me and my mom ventured out into that dark cold morning we ended up sitting in the car for up to an hour waiting for the store to open. Clearly, we didn't do our research. Yet somehow cutting out the coupons for the stores in the car in the pitch black was all part of the fun.

Third, eventually, once we got into the stores themselves nothing was a better deal most of the time. We were never ones to go after big-ticket items on Black Friday and wait in line for Walmart or Best Buy. So the satisfaction of Black Friday was definitely less than that of getting a huge T.V. for half off. But that's alright. I'd honestly rather not get trampled on in the Walmart line.

Our satisfaction came from the little things. Like $3.50 off of your entire purchase at Ulta, and 50% off frames at Michaels. All of which were the same deals the day before Black Friday, and still the same the day after. But the memories of waking up so early and being so excited to go shopping at such an ungodly hour will never be forgotten and those are the best deals of them all.

My mom could have easily said no, or worse said yes but then never woke me up to go shopping. But she didn't, even though she for sure was always incredibly exhausted. She put in the extra effort to give me that one-on-one attention you sometimes crave growing up in a house with three other siblings. And for that, I will always be thankful!