IKEA Grand Opening

It's almost 8pm and I'm getting ready to head to Charlotte to camp out for the GRAND OPENING of the new IKEA store.

This is a first for me, and I'm excited.

David is making fun of me, mostly because I hate cold. It goes something like this, "So, you're going to drive two hours to stand in the freezing cold all night for a store opening, yet if someone offered to PAY you to work outside, you would turn them down, right?"

"of course, I don't like working in the cold."


UPDATE:
Right before we arrived, we decided against making one last rest stop. Boy was it a good thing! The first 100 in line got a free $89 chair. We went to one end of the store and a guy with a clipboard told us the line was at the other end, and it was almost to 100. We took off running. This is the largest IKEA in the WORLD, so it took a few minutes. I dropped our stuff at the end of the line, behind #98, who told us we needed to find "a guy with a clipboard" and sign in. So, we raced back to the other end and found, you guessed it, the SAME guy. But, we got signed in.

Later that night, I met #1 and #2, and they introduced themselves, "hi, I'm 1." "And I'm 2!" Couldn't help thinking I'd fallen into a Dr. Seuss story . . . .


I probably should have checked the weather. I guess cold rain never occurred to me. Some nice people hooked us up with a tarp and here we are, IKEA refugees.



Things kicked into high gear around 7am with donuts, coffee and swag. I nabbed an IKEA toilet seat and a squishy chair and three beach balls.

Home Study Approval!

Our home study was approved by the State of SC today! That means we've been officially cleared for parenthood yet again.

Yeah!

Book for Hanna, update!

Book sales for the book I put together to help Children's Heaven have netted over $1200 for Hanna's health care. I'm thrilled. Shouting out a huge THANK YOU to Ethiopian Orphan Relief for sponsoring this fundraiser! And, sending love and appreciation to all the adoptive families and friends who purchased a book. I hope you get some good cuddle time with your children while you read and look at the photos together.

MORE PETS????

The kids built a multi-layered home for our newest family members. Now, these are not really pets. Think more like in the old days, when animals had to work for a living. These babies are in charge of soil enrichment. We started with about 100 or so, and within three months, we hope they'll be doing big business in compost.


Zion adores them, and says, they are "sooooo cuuuute!" Sarah's already been transplanting some of them into other experiements, like her new "biosphere in a jar" sitting on the kitchen counter. I have to make sure David doesn't pitch it, because it looks more like a "mud in a jar get me off your counter quick before it's contaminated" science project.