The Surprise Trip

Yesterday Alison woke up at 6:30am. Even for her that is pretty early. The only reason I know she was up that early was that Ian had woke up at 6am. So I was up too. After I fed Ian, I told Alison that she needed to get dressed. Now I'm normally pretty easy going about her leaving her jammies on in the morning, so she knew something was up. I got Ian dressed and woke Dan up. The night before he had set his alarm for 7:30 and was hoping to leave by 8. I was worried that Ian would still be asleep at 8. When I woke him up at 6:50 and told him both kids were ready to go, he was shocked.

Alison loves these surprise trips. She loves not knowing where we are going, yet it is torture to because she wants to know, but she wants the surprise. So she asked lots of questions, we gave her vague answers and a little more detail as we got closer. About half way there she couldn't take it anymore, so we told her that we were going to Cabela's and Ikea. She was excited about Cabela's because Dan had told her about the all the animals from when he went over a year ago. She didn't know what Ikea was until we told her that's where her little plates and some other stuff in the house came from.

We got there and Alison was excited. She instantly fell in love with the waterfall. But, it took her awhile to get used to the idea that the animals weren't going to get her. She's used to the zoo and big spaces between her and the animals. Once she got comfortable, she loved it. We took one lap around the bottom floor then headed up to the top floor.

After we looked around a bit upstairs, we decided it was time for lunch. Alison being the brave eater that she is, had pizza and chocolate milk! Dan and I were brave too. I had a smoked ostrich sandwich. Dan had buffalo. We both liked our choices. Poor Ian had grapes and cereal.

By that time Alison wanted pictures of all the animals. So we wandered around the store again and took pictures of all her favorites. Then we shopped. We didn't get much. There are so many things we 'could' get, but we don't really need anything. So we got a couple souvenirs and headed out.

If you want to see the rest of the pictures from Cabela's click here. (I just tried to fix the link, hopefully it will work now.)

Then we were on our way to Ikea. You have no idea what an exciting place this was for Alison. She loves to watch decorating shows on Home and Garden TV. She complains about our "...boring white walls..." and draws pictures of how she wants to decorate her room. It was fun to watch her run from each little room to the next, excitedly pointing out the features of every one. She found a small jeweled chandelier in a pink room and fell in love. We almost got it for her, but it wouldn't have given off enough light to light her room with so we had to talk her out of it. She was disappointed but she handled it really well. She ended up getting some neon colored hangers for her closet, some matching straws, and a mini-sized baking set to go with her pretend food and dishes. We also let her get 2 ice cube trays that make shaped ice cubes. One was hearts. The other is puzzle pieces. We thought she would have lots of fun this summer making puzzle ice sculptures out on the deck with those.

We left Ikea at 6:30. I fed Ian right before and luckily he slept almost all the way home. He was such a little trooper. For somebody who's used to crawling around much of the time now, it was hard for him to have to sit in the carseat for so long. In the stores we used carts so he could be up high by us. We carried him a lot too so that he could get a break from sitting. For awhile in Cabellas we layed his cart cover in the cart and let him lay on it so he could kick and squirm and wiggle. He loved seeing everything at both places. I think he had fun. When we got home we put him on the floor and he crawled and rolled and played for an hour before he realized that he hadn't eaten since we left Ikea. Then he fell asleep for the night.