Black Friday In The Great White North And Visiting Mason

Twice a week, community newspapers are delivered to our doorstep with stories about local news and events. But, mostly they are vehicles for distributing flyers advertising all the retailers having sales in the Cowichan Valley. Normally, there might be 4 to 5 inserts but this Wednesday that ballooned to well over a dozen.  Why? Well Canadian retailers have adopted Black Friday even though our Thanksgiving Day was way back in October!  Thank you, citizens of the USA!!

These are some of the flyers we received this week

As the popularity of Black Friday exploded in the USA over the past several years there’s no doubt Canadian stores felt the pinch with cross-border shopping and the even more threatening boom in online sales which has allowed Canadians to buy products over the Internet rather than crossing the border – it’s easier and costs a lot less too.  Canadian retailers have responded in force with virtually every store, big and small now featuring Black Friday sales just like it was our own idea!  Ain’t life grand!

Mason got a nice, warm black jacket on Black Friday

Not to be left out of all the Black Friday bargoons, we bought Mason an early Christmas present – a nice, warm, down-filled jacket for the winter. After all, we can’t have our little man freezing while we’re sitting by the pool in Desert Hot Springs. The reason we gave it to Mason early is because Carrie is taking him to the Santa Claus Parade in downtown Victoria on Saturday evening. This new jacket should help to keep him nice and warm while he watches his first outdoor Santa Claus parade.

We spent a couple of hours trying to tire Mason out but only succeeded in wearing out both Paulette and myself. He is a bundle of non-stop energy and whenever we visit Mason seems to want to make sure we spend every minute down on the floor playing with him. It’s a lot of fun and we enjoy it because once we head south for the winter we know we’re really going to miss him.

Swans and ducks on the Cowichan River

I’m still going for my long. early morning walks in our neighborhood with Rylie and then Paulette joins us for another hike in the afternoon usually to a nearby hiking trail or park.  This system really makes it easy for me to reach my 10,000 step a day goal. As of today, my daily average is 11,675.

I knocked another few things off of my to-do list in preparation for our departure in mid-December. I loaded up both of our 30lb propane tanks and a 20lb tank I use for the Weber Q and took them all to get filled. At least now I know we won’t run out of propane on the way south.  I checked my toolbox to make sure everything I took out during the summer was put back in. It’s going to get cold this weekend so I’m glad now that I did winterize the 5’er after all. Better safe than sorry.

Thanks for visiting!