Saturday at Ikea

Oh, what a feeling! We all woke without alarms (at least no electronic alarms). It was still 8:00 am, but the extra hour was great. It was an easy & relaxing morning. Ahhhh!

We spent the afternoon at Ikea. It was Shawn's first visit to SmalLand - hard to believe, I know! While he played for an hour, Raj showed me a desk that he had picked out for Shawn's room. We actually found a corner unit with a hutch of the same line (Micke). It was a lot of desk to fit in a small space - Ikea's specialty!  We also picked out a blue desk chair and a mirror to go over his dresser. Before we retrieved Shawn from SmalLand, we also picked out pieces & parts for me to make a desk in the craft/guest room - I'm excited! Then we got Shawn, had lunch (we all got Swedish meatballs), found our things in the warehouse level, and checked out. A successful trip (especially considering that our last visit ended up with SmalLand under construction and the cafe closed as we approached it)!

Both kids fell asleep on the way home, so Raj and I left them in the car to snooze while we brought the boxes into the house. (It's incredible how heavy small boxes can be!) Then, Raj was ready for a break and catch his breath from a cold/allergies... And the Bears / Packers game was on. I was motivated to get our new stuff put together!!

Before:

I managed to get Shawn's desk completely put together (with some supervision from Lilly and occasional help from Shawn, who was actually super helpful at just the right times).

Raj was shocked when he came upstairs at the end of the game! I was almost done! He thought I'd be working on my own desk, but I feel like that project is a bit more involved, and I wanted to get something totally done. While Shawn and I finished the desk, Raj and Lilly went to Best Buy to get a wireless converter for his new computer and they checked out an alpaca farm just a few miles away from our house. When they got back, the desk was done! Mission complete!

After:

Raj hung the curtain rod and we decided not to hang the mirror until Shawn gets a little taller.  (Tomorrow I'll assemble his desk chair.)

Sept 29

Update:

Shawn couldn't wait to do serious work at his new desk after school!(Not homework yet, but he has that to do, too.)
Tonight we discovered that the shiny portion of the white board at the back of his desk is actually a magnetic white board! We dug out the alphabet magnets that we can't use on our stainless steal fridge and gave them a new home on Shawn's desk.  I also found some dry erase markers in my old teaching supplies. I gave him a desk lamp, a hand held pencil sharpener, some glue, and kid scissors that he often needs for his homework. Tomorrow, we'll find something to corral his pencils, etc.

Eventually he did use his desk to do his homework.