The Family Addiction

I absolutely love city life. I like the diversity of the people. I like the variety of arts programming, museums, etc. I like the interesting little bakeries and coffee shops. I like the variety of ethnic restaurants. I like the excitement.

Living in Green Bay, Wisconsin for FIVE years before moving to Salt Lake City this summer, was hard for both my husband and me. We would relish our weekends away to Minneapolis to visit my parents. It would give us the fix we needed to endure another two months or so back in Packerland. One of the things we missed the most was the shopping. We should have just called our weekends over there “spend fests”.

Over Christmas, during THE trip, we did a little of everything in the big city of Minneapolis. Of course we were still able to squeeze in a lot of shopping. We told ourselves that we wouldn’t be spending money – just window shopping – because of our ENORMOUS debt due to our still unsold vacation home in Green Bay. Usually, to get the kids to buy into our window shopping schemes, we disguise them with promises of treats, books (they love bookstores – yea! I did something right as a parent), or the circus. The Mall of America, for example, has an indoor park of sorts with rides and games. Harry has always called it “the circus.”

Last fall, IKEA opened a store across the street from the Mall of America. My parents called to tell me about it after their first visit to the store. “It’s amazing, Carol. It’s huge and has so many things to look at. We spent the whole morning there. Oh..and be sure to get the lunch. It’s really cheap and the meatballs are fabulous.” I was dumbfounded. I really thought my mom had entered a cult or something. She was absolutely enthralled with the place. She went on and on about it. “You know, hon, it’s really not just a store. It’s more of a destination.” C’mon, Mom! This is not Disney we’re talking about.

We had to do some serious pre-planning before our excursion to the “destination”. Since the store in Minneapolis is fairly new, it’s very popular. My brother had taken his kids a few weeks prior and warned me to get there early to get in line for the drop-off kid play area. I think Chris and I were most excited about that feature. My parents and brother raved about it. “You can drop them off for two hours!” We talked it up to the kids only to find out that Ella couldn’t be left there because she’s not potty-trained and the time limit was an hour. So…now we had a VERY sad girl who just stood with her nose pressed on the glass wall watching Harrison run into the huge play area with millions of balls on the floor. She soon got over it and then we had about 50 minutes of “free” time. Parents all know that two on one is SO much easier than two on two.

The store is actually really cool. We managed to pick up many items (so much for window shopping) that we “needed”. We truly got caught in the IKEA frenzy. As we pushed around our cart, with the little flag affixed advertising the 99 cent breakfast, we found millions of wonderful gadgets from salt and pepper shakers to kitchen stools. It was really fun. They carefully plant toy areas around the store so that when your hour is up, and you are back to full ranks, the kids still have distractions.

Lunch time rolled around and I made Chris go get us the infamous meatballs. The kids hated them, and mine were cold, but they were CHEAP. After a few more departments, we finally had to stop. It was a hard decision, but we had a full cart and happy kids. How much better does it get?

Last night I didn’t get home from work till nine (way past the kids’ bedtime) and unfortunately Ella was still awake. She asked me to read her a book, and as I carried her to our reading chair through the kitchen, she made sure to point out the stool she sat in for dinner. She is very proud of herself for being able to climb up onto our new IKEA stools all by herself. I’m just proud of her dad for figuring out how to put them together!