Over the Weekend: Nov. 4-6, 2011

Wow, we had a great weekend! Here's a sneak peek...

Friday

We were on the road immediately after work--the start of nine weekends in a row of traveling. Yikes. And then Kelsey has told me we are staying home until the baby is born. This weekend's mission was to get back to the Mall of America (we were there just two months ago) and IKEA in Minneapolis to spend some early Christmas money we've received on baby stuff, begin our Christmas shopping and for Kelsey to have a second date with H&M to spend her birthday money.

So we made part of the trek Friday after work to stay with my mom in Belmond. We enjoyed supper with my mom, sister and nephew at our favorite restaurant in Belmond before falling asleep to Cars 2 and calling it an early night in anticipation of the next big day of driving and shopping.

Saturday

Kelsey, my mom, our nephew and I were on the road just before 7 and met Kelsey's dad at the top-of-Iowa exit to swap our Jeep for his cargo van. Breakfast at BK was just the thing to get us going.

It was my first experience driving a 15-passenger van, but I was pleasantly surprised at the comfortable ride. If we end up having 10-11 kids, we will definitely have to get one!

We made it safely to the mall just before it opened. This was key to our successful day. Have you ever been to H&M in the Mall of America around noon? It's crazy, and the checkout lines are about 20-minutes deep. We were there at 10 and basically had the store to ourselves. Kelsey was on a mission for lots of goodies, including a winter coat (her birthday gift from me) and a few other things, which I am sure you will hear about on Snappy Casual. We both got clothes during our hour-and-a-half in there and also scored some great Christmas gifts for a few people on our list.

My nephew was really into Lego Land, which my 6-year-old self would have also loved very much.

We had some good 'ol Panda Express for lunch. Good thing this huge Lego robot was keeping an eye on things. Glad to see they have stepped up the security at the mall.

As we were finishing up our lunch, we ran into our awesome friends Tommy and Missy (did you hear they are expecting their fourth child?!). It was great to see them and catch up for a few minutes.

Then it was time to head across the street to IKEA. We had a list of items that were must-haves for the nursery and also had room in our budget for some other fun housewares as well. We were there for about three hours and spent $750...$100 under budget! That never happens.

It was a great day of shopping and I have to praise Kelsey for her pre-shopping online and organized lists that allowed us to only spend a few hours in the mall and a few hours in IKEA and get a bunch of great stuff. Spending $1,000 in six hours is not easy, but we were on a mission and we got exactly what we wanted and needed. We were totally prepared to spend that much, but we were nervous about getting it all done in one day.

The van still had plenty of room even after loading all our items. The length of the baby's dresser and storage unit were why we needed it in the first place.

Southbound for home, we met up with Kelsey's parents for supper to swap vehicles again. We had to leave a few of the larger items in the van and will have to get them to our house when we have an empty Jeep sometime. Luckily we don't really need them just yet.

We were exhausted when we got back to my mom's house. I wanted to watch the end of the Bama/LSU game, but fell asleep almost instantly once I laid down. Good thing we got that extra hour of sleep.

Sunday

We rolled out of bed and headed for home. We were so excited to organize all of the treasures we found the day before and put together our new rocking chair.

We attended church at 5, and got groceries and some much-needed relaxation to finish off our weekend.

Hope you had a great one, too!

Come back later today to enter a giveaway from JennJill Designs.