IKEA in the Camry

My mom and I headed out Saturday night to run a few errands. Our last stop was IKEA. My mom has been helping me get my game room organized (finally!) and we needed to get a bookshelf from IKEA to finish the project up. First of all, getting out of the store with all the stuff was quite the feat. We had 12 baskets on a big trolley, the stroller with the baby, and another big trolley with 3 very large and very heavy boxes containing the pieces of the bookshelf. The trolleys refused to go in a straight line and so we were weaving all over the place. We originally thought we could buy it and then come pick it up later, given that we were driving John's Camry. But by the time we were buying the stuff it seemed like such a hassle to come back and get it another day and they have pictures all over showing how easy it is to put the stuff on the top of your car...

So we got the stuff outside, I pulled the car up to the pick-up spot and a guy that works there who looked like he was about 12 came over and offered to help us get the stuff into our car. I'm sure he was looking at our 2 full trolleys and the small 4-door sedan and wondering what we were thinking. We managed to get the two thinner boxes in the trunk by pushing them through to the back seat and a few boxes fit into the trunk and a few more into the back seat (poor James was surrounded). Then the IKEA helper suggests that we put the big box on the roof. Doesn't sound too bad, but he puts these cardboard things up there and then says my mom and I have to tie it securely to the car. He can't help because of liability.

We just looked at each other--we don't know how to tie knots! I'm sure the guys working there were taking bets as to whether we would make it home with our purchase intact. So we did our best and tied the cardboard pieces to the car and then put the big box on top of those and tied the box to the car. Once that was done we had to load my mom and the rest of the baskets into the front passenger seat. I couldn't even see her and she was laughing--I could only see one of the baskets shaking every time she laughed.

By this time it was almost 10pm, James was hungry, I was tired and we had to take the back roads home. But that box never moved ;-) The bookshelf is now set up in the game room--it was worth it.

My only regret is not getting a picture of my mom.

Toilet Trauma

We have lived in our house for 4 1/2 years and besides the fact that you have to flush the toilet twice to get it all down, we have maybe had one or two occasions where we have had to get the plunger out (yuck!). Last week all three of our toilets required assistance. For a few hours there we only had one working toilet. Just bad luck for the two toilets upstairs and nothing a plunger wouldn't fix. But the downstairs toilet...

Andrew is potty trained. Except when he doesn't want to use the toilet. And almost every time he is playing in the backyard these days he does not want to put aside the trucks and shovels to come inside and use the toilet. Unfortunately that almost always means that we're cleaning up poopy underwear after he has been outside. (Any suggestions on how to change this behavior are welcome!) Well, John happened to be the one cleaning him up last week and he had rinsed the underwear out in the toilet and then left them in there while he was cleaning Andrew off. He threw the dirty wipes in the toilet and flushed before he remembered that the underwear was still in there. Pretty funny. We had to avoid the downstairs toilet until we located a snake. Luckily our good neighbor had a snake and the plumber expertise--he came over and did it for us. Turns out the underwear somehow made it through to the sewer where they are now floating free I guess. We had a Christmas gift sticker on the toilet reminding us not to use it and of course Andrew took over the job of toilet police--he made sure nobody went in there! It was good to have all toilets working again.