Cheap Food and Sweet Design

"I couldn't afford a trip to Europe after college so I went backpacking through an IKEA to find myself." - unknown

We hadn't taken Maeve to IKEA since she was too small to walk... so it's been awhile.

Daddy and I were thrilled to bits when IKEA finally opened in Centennial, Colorado. It's a good 40 minutes away from our house, so not exactly next door, but by comparison, the next closest one is in Utah. I had gotten hooked on IKEA in the UK when visiting my parents - I adored the cheap food, the sweet design elements, and the cool build-it-yourself plan.

So we were excited to bring Maeve, at last. We knew for many of her younger years that she just didn't have the patience for such an endeavor - if you've tried, you know it's nigh impossible to leave IKEA before the two hour mark has passed. But with Daddy taking the week off, and Maeve being totally in love with the furniture section at the thrift store, we decided to risk it, to bring her with us.

We began with food, always a good way to get Maeve to like something.

Cinnamon roll of happiness

And she loved the room set-ups, and wanted to try out every single bed. Also, she had to check all the toilets to be sure they were fake, as we had assured her.

She could have spent an hour in the office chair section, if we'd let her. Chairs that spin! Such a novelty! It was like an amusement park for boring grownups!

Whee!

Her obvious favorite area was the children's furniture and toys. I was very pleasantly surprised that she didn't get a case of the 'gimmies' and start asking for everything she saw, but she did fall in love with a dragon puppet. And I don't blame her, he's very cute, with a taste for sweets:

When we finally finished, three hours later, we ended the trip with food, too, and Maeve got an ice cream cone, her very first. I ate it first, to get it down to a manageable size, and then she took over and really did pretty well, all told. No major spills, she didn't drop it, and no tears when it got drippy.  All in all, yesterday was a lovely, satisfying trip, and Daddy and I got started on some mattress shopping. Maeve's behavior was so good, we'll certainly do it again!