Old St. Charles and a day away

The day after Thanksgiving is usually the day I'm out shopping at crazy hours trying to get good deals for Christmas and later putting up the Christmas tree.  This year, I slept in instead and convinced Joel into watching the girls for me while I went shopping with Jennifer, Rita, Ashton, and Bettigail (Jennifer's mother-in-law).  I did get up that morning and do a little shopping on the internet before heading into Walmart before meeting the girls to see if any of Walmart's deals were still available.  I did get a few things at Walmart before heading south.  All the girls were ready to go by the time I got there and we were off!

By the way, I've been trying to tell as many people as I can the last few months about Ebates.  If you do any shopping on the internet, then you need to check out Ebates!  It's really easy.  You sign up through their website and then before shopping anywhere on the internet, you simply login to your Ebates account first, and go to the store's link on the Ebates website.  From there, you can shop on the other website as usual, and even checkout like normal.  You'll get a percentage of your purchase dollars back through Ebates.  It's simple!  You can even add everything to your cart, say at Target, and then go to Ebates, sign in to your Ebates account, search for Target and go to Target's site through Ebates and your items will still be in your cart at the Target site.  I've done a lot of online shopping this year for Christmas, and I'm scheduled to get a pretty good check from my purchases.  They send you a check in the mail four times a year.  You can even get money by referring people.  I got a $50 referral bonus for referring two people during the last month.  All they had to do what click on my referral link, and $50 is added to my next check.  That's an easy $50!!  If you haven't signed up yet, do it now!  You can even sign up under my referral link if you want.  Click here to sign up:  http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=8WDQRMXabxYyTdrgOvUIVA%3D%3D.  After signing up and making your first $25 purchase from any website, you'll get a $10 gift card sent to you.  My email is:  trsta5@hotmail.com if you want to sign up that way as a referral!

Enough about Ebates and how great they are.  We started out our day with lunch at Josephine's.  Yummy!!!  My day was made with their clam chowder and a crystal bowl salad.

I figured since the day before was Thanksgiving, I didn't need dessert at Josephine's, but it looked soooooo good!

Poor Ashton wasn't so enthused.  The gift shop at Josephine's wasn't up her alley.

We then headed to do a little shopping before going to Old St. Charles for the evening.  It was beautiful down there with all the shops lit up.  They had carolers walking the street, horse and buggy rides, different actors walking the streets dressed up, and even people roasting chestnuts over an open fire.  Ashton and I tried some roasted chestnuts, and I don't know what's so good about them!  Here's a short video of the night.

I'd only been home about an hour that night when Ainsley woke up and started throwing up.  That led to everyone else in our house eventually getting sick and a pretty crappy next week.  The flu bug that was going around was not fun at all!