Weekend Getaway

The end of July, Robb's mom and and I took a much awaited trip to Minneapolis to go shopping. I have been wanting to go to Ikea for a LONG time now and I haven't been to the Mall of America since our family vacation when I was 15. I was so excited to get to do this. It was very nice of Robb to say OK and watch the kids for 4 days without me around. We left on a Thursday and got there and checked into our hotel that evening. The next morning we got an early start at Ikea. We got there so early that the only part open was the cafeteria for breakfast. We ate there and my brother Mitch, who lives in Minneapolis, met us there. I was in awe of the Ikea shopping experience. It was all I expected and more! Mitch, humored us and shopped with us for about 3 hours. By the time he left we were probably only a 1/3 of the way through the store. After awhile we stopped to get a drink and evaluate what we had put in our cart so far. Little did we realize we had shopped for 5 1/2 hours without stopping. I got a lot of organizing stuff that I am hoping with help keep my house slightly less disastrous.  Wishful thinking, I know. We finished in Ikea by 6 or so and decided we needed to think about the rest of our purchases and headed to the mall.
The mall was just as huge as I remembered it to be and at no point in our trip did I ever know where I was when we were inside that mall. I always got so turned around. We did a little shopping that evening and closed the mall down. I got to see what the American Doll store was all about. Abby would have LOVED it, I thought it was slightly creepy though.
We did have a couple interesting things happen while we were on our trip. We were in our last store of the night and heard the cashier talking about a situation in the parking garage. When we asked her about it she said that the ramp in the West garage had collapsed. Crap! Of course we were in the West garage. We were pretty nervous so we headed back to the car and luckily it wasn't a ramp that had collapsed but instead a support had fallen when someone tried to drive a UHAUL truck into the parking garage. Unfortunately the man in the truck ended up passing away.
The next morning we went to the upscale shopping center that was close by. It was fun to look around at Pottery Barn, Pottery Barn Kids, Crate and Barrel etc. too bad I couldn't afford any of it.
We did make a quick pit stop at Ikea just to pick up a couple things that we forgot and then shopped the Mall of America the rest of the day. It was hilarious when we were done. It was just Susie and I and not much luggage but we had managed to pack the Yukon completely full with all of our purchases. Successful shopping trip! That night we had a little excitement at the hotel we stayed at. We were both in bed and the hallway was really loud so I peeked my head out to see what was going on. The hallway was full of people and some lady said that someone got shot at the wedding reception downstairs. Crazy! I guess Minneapolis is a bit to BIG city for us. Thanks for a wonderful trip Susie.