IKEA

   While my parents were in Russia, Cam and I stayed with the kids and did parental types of things. One of the things that fell under our jurisdiction was helping Hayley to move into her new apartment. It was seriously lacking some style and cleanliness (and also curtains so everybody walking by wouldn't see her changing, or watching Friday Night Lights). So to remedy our problems, we headed to Ikea. An Ikea trip starts out as kind of a wonderful dream with cute little rooms and imaginary apartments where your closet only contains 8 of the same red dress and looks muy organized. And everything's so affordable you find yourself filling your cart with a couple of everything under $8.
  After a while, the dream begins to turn quite nightmarish. You can't find the shortcuts because they just rearranged the store, Charlie's diving in bins of stuffed dogs and climbing in between grimy Ikea sheets, when he's not transporting dozens of garbage cans on hard to steer Ikea dollies. Stella's hungry and whiny and slobbering on a stuffed animal that I we will inevitably drop and fail to purchase, Hayley can't make a decision to save her life and I am thinking about how the money my parents left is not going to last us five days, let alone two weeks (and I'm dreading the scavenger hunt I will have to go on to find  his secret money spots).
  It sounds a lot like those choose your own ending Goosebumps books I used to read. There was one ending that I always chose, which left you falling and falling into eternity. Every single Ikea trip seems to digress to that very ending. When we finally reach "collect your own furniture warehouse" we've lost our lists and don't care about anything but the cinnamon buns and ice cream waiting just beyond the finish line. We never collect our furniture, instead going straight to the checkout where we fling all of our "isn't this cute? And so cheap!" items into random bins near the registers and end up purchasing two of the six things we came for and about twelve items that will promptly be moved to the "DI" box upon arriving at home. Seriously? Heart-shaped silicon ice cube trays?
   The best part of this particular ramble, is that when my mom got home, we all went back and did it again. Will we never learn? Actually, we stopped for chocolate cake the second time around. At least we're improving!
  Watch Charlie working in the background of these photos. It's a good thing these two are so cute.

Also, can I point out that Charlie is barefoot and scanning our purchases? Love it