ikea=overwhelming

My mom and I made a pilgrimage of epic proportions to Ikea yesterday eve. I say pilgrimage, because it truly was an adventure. We decided to partake in the full Ikea experience and, not expecting to buy anything, picked up one of their "Yellow grab bags," in which you put items you desire to purchase. My mom ended up buying a few things for both of us so the bag came in good use.

We started out first on the top floor, the Display Rooms, where they've put together actual room setting with all their stuff. It was fun to see all the creative ways to use their furniture and I kind of got the desire to remodel my home completely with their stuff. We walked in the still quite crowded store around and around until it ended up in the kids section. At this point, we walked down the stairs and into the Market place, where you can look at the different items that made up the rooms in the display section. It took us a while to get through all of it. It was strangely overwhelming; strangely never ending. Too many plastic containers...must look somewhere else....too many red towels, must look somewhere else...too many....and you get the idea. Finally we made our way to the checkout and then decided we'd complete the Ikea experience by making a trip back upstairs to the restaurant. Yeah, the restaurant. We had a great helping of Swedish Meatballs. They were tasty!
What I got at Ikea:
Plastic shower curtain--$1.49
Three Scissor Set--$1.30
Drawer Organizer--$7.49

I finished the ESL class fiasco on Friday. Hallelujah! We had our final test in our morning class and then group presentations in our afternoon class. I feel fairly confident about the test; I spent nearly two hours the night before studying and then when I got to taking the test, it was very easy. It feels so great to have those 6 credits out of the way; now just 11 more and I'll be ESL endorsed!

Tomorrow my summer break starts again. On the agenda this week: DEEP clean my whole house, clean carpets, wash windows, dust blinds!, organize my office (I have primary stuff strewn from one end to the other), get rid of clothes I haven't worn in 6 months (that was a rule my big brother, Eric, told me and I thought I would implement it), finish weeding outside front flower patch, and probably more stuff that I'm forgetting. I'll stay busy, for sure, but I'm actually excited; believe it or not, I enjoy cleaning. And, the good thing is that I'm feeling in a great mood to purge everything not needed so this should be successful!

We have a BIG Birthday Event happening this Wednesday! Ben's dad is turning the big 50 and we're helping him throw himself a party. He's great. It should be a fun day....we have lots of surprises up our selves!!!!