IKEA Excursion plus more: December 31, 2010

Highlights from today: (click here for pictures)

(click here for a video)

Well the night wasn’t as restful as we had planned.  I must have been excited about shopping and stayed awake until 2 and then as I was getting tired, I noticed Anderson was sitting up.  I crawled down to help him with his covers and he said that he couldn’t sleep (he had been snoring only a few minutes ago).  Anyway, we laid on his sleeping bag until 3 and then he had to potty-which didn’t wake up Graham but did wake Campbell who screamed until she had milk, which woke Reagan up for a few minutes.  After all was quiet again, Anderson and I ended up in the other bed.  By 4, Anderson had finally gone to sleep when Graham started whimpering “daddy, daddy” at home we would have ignored him but here it was the most pitiful thing ever.  I took Graham and his milk to Robby and they went on to sleep and then I finally did a little after 4.  We were all stirring by 7:45 and out to eat breakfast pretty swiftly.

The breakfast was big and the kids were thrilled.  Waffles, omelets, yogurt, bacon, cinnamon rolls, muffins, eggs, french toast, granola, potatoes and juice-makes for some pretty happy kids.  They were shoveling it in as quick as we could get it to the table.  All around the breakfast area, they have lots of fountains that have pennies in them.  Reagan asked if you make a wish does it really come true.  I said, well sometimes it does.  She said if her wish didn’t come true she would say “humph, I wasted my money on that wish and it didn’t come true!”  Graham can’t get over how big the hotel is and how high the elevators go.  That is all that he can talk about during the day…of course, everywhere we have been today, we can still see our hotel when we are getting in and out of the car. 

We were at IKEA a little bit before 10 when they opened.  Reagan and Anderson were ready to go to the play area.  But since Graham isn’t potty trained he couldn’t go.  It bothered him last time we were at an IKEA but this time Robby told him they were going to “class” and that we had candy and he had no problem seeing them go away!  We found what we had come for-table for the living room, lamp for the den and living room, a storage cabinet for Graham’s room (which they didn’t have in stock) and even a light fixture for the kitchen.  We even found lots that we didn’t come for-lots of storage containers, a moose that has on a pair of socks, light bulbs and even a lamp that we don’t know where we will put. 

After we checked out and stuffed the car full, we went back in for lunch around 1.  Kids meals were free so everyone had just what they wanted-mac and cheese for the boys and pasta for Reagan.  Campbell had had so much shopping that she had fallen asleep in the stroller.  She was a pretty patient shopper but she likes to keep moving.  It did help that there were a million people in the store today and she had plenty to look at.  Graham isn’t that patient of a shopper.  We had to keep him contained in the shopping cart and feed him candy for the whole hour that Reagan and Anderson were playing. 

After lunch, we came back over to the hotel.  Usually, it takes forever to get the kids to put on their clothes or change clothes but where they saw there bathing suits they were naked and suited up in no time at all.  Then they had to wait on Robby and me to blow up all the floatees-1 ring, 1 big blue ring and 6 armies.  We went downstairs and were the only ones in the pool for awhile.  The water was decent temperature-everyone really enjoyed it.  Reagan and Anderson are getting very brave.  Anderson had even improved since we had been swimming last time.  Graham on the other hand didn’t want us the throw him and kept swallowing lots of water unlike last time.  At one time though, he did have me take off his ring because he wanted to go under the water like Dad.  We tried but he didn’t close his mouth!  After a while swimming, I inched over to the connected hot tub and held on to Campbell while she floated in the other pool and soon the other 3 and Robby had come to the hot tub too.

Back in the room, everyone had baths which took quite a while.  Graham was getting into everything so Robby laid down with him and within 3 minutes they were both snoring.  We finally woke them up and everyone got ready to leave for the evening.  On the way out, they were having the Manager’s Reception downstairs with free drinks and cokes.  So we stopped for a few minutes before driving a few blocks to the California Pizza Kitchen to pick up a BBQ pizza for us and a cheese pizza for the kids.  We also picked up a few pieces of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory.  While we waited on the pizza, we had planned on walking through the Disney store but it had already closed so we just watched the people ice skate for a few minutes.

Back in the room, we started our New Year’s Eve Celebration.  We began with a few pictures-notice the cowboy hats-we are in Texas!  (and I didn’t have any New Year’s hats).  Then we had a few coloring pages for the kids to do while we prepared the pizza.  We all ate our pizza and the excitement was building for the countdown.  After we finished the pizza, we worked on our resolutions for 2011 and discussed how well we had done on accomplishing the 2010 resolutions-I will post a list of them tomorrow.  We counted down at approximately 7:54.  We had the streamers ready but they missed fired-not surprising considering they had been shaken for the last hour.  After shouting Happy New Year, we opened up a big container of cookies that we had bought for the occasion.  I had told the kids that they could have one and then they could get another one.  Graham must not have understood because he would get one, take a bite, put it back and then get another one.  He must have truly though that it was a sampler platter.  The kids called all of the grandparents to tell them about the day and wish them a Happy New Year.  They then had a few pieces of candy-Campbell saw them, crawled across the room, pulled up and stuck out her hand until she was given a bite too. 

We put on our pajamas and everyone went to bed-3 of the 4 are in a new spot tonight so hopefully tonight will be more restful!  

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