IKEA

Jeff is still traveling off and on, including weekends sometimes.  I try to keep the kids pretty distracted when he's gone, and we hadn't been to IKEA since Benjamin was in diapers, and I got an IKEA gift card for my birthday, and I had a growing list…so, the four of us went.

The kids think IKEA trips are fun field trips, so they were all excited.  Jonathan is too tall for Smaland now, but Grace and Benjamin were excited to go play for an hour.  Here they are right after I checked them in, saying their goodbyes through the window.

My IKEA method is this:  Come in with a list of what I need, walk through the entire store and choose what's on my list (with maybe a couple of other things I didn't know I needed,) buy them, load the car, and return to SmaLand before my one hour deadline.  Jonathan was my trusty assistant (or, my left-hand man, as I call him,) and we made it on time without any trouble.

After picking up the youngers, we walked through parts of IKEA again to see kid stuff, and we had lunch at the cafe, which, again, is a big treat.  I didn't get a good picture of that, but they did really well.

They had to try out the rolls of carpet.

Now, I have to tell you that they kids were REALLY excited about a stop at the Lego store.  There is a Lego store within driving distance of IKEA, and since we don't have a Lego store very close to our  home, this was the highlight of the day for them.  And since they each had a very little bit of Christmas money to spend, and Jonathan got a gift card for his birthday, they were just about jumping out of their skin in anticipation of this part of the trip.  And they did have a lot of fun at the Lego store.

The not-exciting part of the trip was that I had to make a return at a store at the mall.  The kids sat under the counter while I did it.  Jonathan is not usually a hugger, but these two are, sometimes, even without prompting.

We had a fun day, we got a few errands completed, and we forgot - for a bit - how much we missed Jeff.