The advent of Swedish goodness

It was a long day yesterday. Long but fun. I woke up for the first time somewhere in the four o'clock hour as Gus printed out directions to our new Ikea. He was the avant-garde, securing places in the line to be among the first to tour the facility. I arrived a few hours later with child and Ikea-rabid neighbors in tow (the occupants of the two apartments downstairs, Jill and Val, are total Ikea devotees. They are best friends and regularly take trips together to what has been our closest store in Seattle. Needless to say, the opening has been eagerly anticipated in our stairwell). We got there at about 8:30, oohed and ahhed over all of the free gear that Gus had acquired, and bided our time. The employees were super pumped and did lots of marching drills, and then the flags were raised and the US and Swedish national anthems were sung. And then we were in. We had to walk through a gauntlet of employees that included screaming and pounding of those little rubber ears that are used at sports events (Chie was NOT a fan of the noise) and then it was up the escalators to the showrooms. We didn't last long there. Both of us decided that we were famished and so we went to the cafe to get breakfast. I had forgotten how cheap their food is! And it's so good too. After breakfast we toodled around for a while but quickly hit the "ok, let's jet" place. Chie was ready for a nap, Gus was past his limit, and the crowds were just increasing. In the end, he took off by himself and I waited a bit longer for J&V to finish their perusing. They were quite satisfied with the new store and bought a few bags worth of stuff: new textiles for V's bed, some cat and baby toys, and lots of food stuffs.

Once we were home we settled back in, but that part was short-lived for me because I had class that afternoon. My second speed class started on Monday; it's two days a week for five hours. I'm really psyched (no pun intended) about the material (the class title is Counseling) and the prof is phenomenal. He actually wasn't there yesterday, though, and instead we got to hear from his recently-former TA. John just finished his Ph.D. program, specializing in addictions and trauma, and the lecture was absolutely fascinating. I did take a 15-minute fiesta sometime around 4:00 because I just couldn't keep my eyes open. I'm very glad that I went, though, and that I actually stayed.

We collectively crashed last night. We traded off baby entertaining and ate fruit for dinner. I think that we were all in bed well before nine, a rarity for us. I'm still a bit wasted today but I have a lot to work on. Hopefully a morning nap will be in order soon.