It was pretty cold outside the South Hill Mall Target at 9:30 p.m. Thanksgiving, when Chris Leppell and his mom, Gail Leppell, showed up to wait for the doors to open on Black Friday.

Chris wanted an Xbox 360 enough to stand outside shivering all night. He’d earned half the early-morning sale price. His mom had come to shiver with him and cover the rest.

Things warmed up considerably at 1 a.m., when Terri Anderson and Tim Shortsleeve arrived with chairs, blankets, and a propane heater.

They settled in and refined their strategy for the pre-dawn assault on cash registers. One son deployed to Circuit City and another to Staples. A daughter stationed herself at Toys R Us. They’d divvied up responsibility for the toys, the GPS, the electronics.

“I have a whole big list,” Anderson said.

Actually, that list is smaller than the one for last year’s pre-dawn raids.

“I’ve already warned them that mother is not spending what she did last year,” she said. “Things are obviously tighter.”

Short funds were all the more reason to show up for the fun of staying out in the cold all night, warmed by the memory of turkey and the anticipation of good deals on board games, DVDs, electronics and all things Miley Cyrus.

Nick Lucara, 14, was about to own Guitar Hero, the reward for a summer of mowing lawns and saving allowance money. His buddy, Zach Bray, also 14, been saving, too, for video games. They’d camped out last year and had enough fun to do it again.

It was the third year for Alyssa Wendt, 16, who wrapped herself in a blanket and cuddled up with her grandmother, Nancy Wendt.

“This is a special time for us,” Nancy said. “It’s a tradition. We come and spend time together.

“And meet new people,” chimed in Polly Oeung, who, with her friends Sina Men and Myra Lopez-Chhour, had enjoyed getting to know the Wendts, as well as Linda Kalmbach and teen buddies Haley Poppleton and Kristen Herman-Haberly.

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