Jingle's note from Santa (X's Redemption) / Ikea Adventure / Healthy Soup

Saturday, December 3, 2011

X did much better on Friday (he got a Green day). Santa told Jingle he had taken X off the naughty list, but he has his eye on him.

Jingle brought back a note from Santa! A and X were excited that this came from the "Desk of Santa" himself..


IKEA Adventure
Today we took the kids to the IKEA in Frisco (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/store/frisco). This is a unique experience in and of itself.

When we entered, we noticed they have a free, monitored playland area (Smaland). We signed them in and got one of those flat, lighted buzzers that they give you when waiting in a restaurants. We then have one hour to shop while the kids entertain themselves. At the end of the hour we got buzzed. Sadly, we had only made it 300 feet from the station. Fortunately, that area was the Trofast children's storage systems (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/childrens_ikea/20474/)  that we came to see up close. It is exactly what we need and we will return in the next few weeks to get it when we can actually put it in the car (with no kids in car seats).

We had to put the kids back in Smaland (pronounced "Small Land," but presumably spelled the Sweedish way) for another hour. We had finished our planning and were walking through the rest of this HUGE store when we got paged (becuase our battery buzzer died). We picked up X and A who thought they were about to starve to death at 1:30 PM and went upstairs to the IKEA restaurant (as opposed to the IKEA Bistro on the first floor). We had some very tasty chicken strips, fries, apple "cake" and drinks for all four of us for less than $20. Nice bargin. We went back down stairs and X and A had frozen yogurt cones.

Healthy Soup
Also on Saturday, I spent my usual 3 to 4 hours slaving over a stove making my healthy bean and veggie spicy soup. It turned out very well and made sixteen 2-cup servings (that I store and freeze in individual ziploc bowls with lids). It takes two huge pots plus multiple pans to make it all and takes over an hour to clean up the mess. I only do it once every 4 or 5 weeks and love to eat it for lunch at school.

Campbells Soup, Ha! My soup is mmm, mmm, better!