It was OUR weekend!

We did it!  After 3.5 years, Mom and I took a roadtrip to Minnesota together and it was F-U-N!   We started out at the Junk Bonanza which is a three day festival that brings in vendors to sell, well, junk!  It was jam packed and we managed to sneak a few good purchases out of the deal.  My pictures don't make it look too appealing but we scored some really great jewelry (not pictured), a very large map of the Roman Empire.  I know, Mom told me that it was definitely one of a kind and that no one would ever have one in their living room!  True true Peg.  Sold!  Some nice old MalloWear dishes for the kids, a pair of super cool vintage boxing gloves, sparkle shoes for Julia, a vintage 8mm video camera, a Bend, Oregon pennant which I haven't decided yet to give it up to my inlaws from there...Some cool little locker keys that will become necklaces soon, and the beginnings of BRIGHT.  I couldn't find any good R, G, or T's.  Plus the letters were a little pricey. 

After our Bonanza-ing, we hit the highway to head to IKEA.  Those of you who don't know what IKEA is, well, I can't really say I understand either.  I have heard great and rave reviews from fellow bloggers that comment about how they load VAN fulls of stuff out of there.  It is a home store (think Bed Bath and Beyond) but with furniture, organizational solutions, full on kitchens to purchase, bedroom furniture etc.  I couldn't wait to get out of there and walked out with a rug and a couple storage bins.  Hmpfh...Maybe Junk is more my style I guess.

Saturday we greeted Mall of America's doors with the intention of finding some great deals.  And that we did!  The Lego store was awesome (see me and Lego Woody) and other favorite stores were Naartjee for kids, LOLA (a spin off of BCBG but much cheaper), the kids scored some light up shoes from Sketchers.  Mom even got herself some Shapeups from there.  Oh yeah!  We hit up a movie at 9:30 and left the MOA at midnight!  Yikes! 

The best part and actually the worst part about the trip was our foiled plans for finding lodging at 12:00am after our MOA adventure.  We hit up three bigger hotels in Minneapolis and no rooms at the inn were available.  We decided to go back to our original hotel just outside of Minneapolis because we thought for SURE they would have something.   Nope.  They led us on a route to find another hotel.  Apparently we took the wrong turn and ended up in pitch black Minnesota, County Road 2.  We finally reached the interstate and stopped in three small podunk towns before FINALLY resting our heads at 3:00AM.  Geesh, that was exhausting! 

It was a great weekend with my Mom.  I hated to see her have to leave and go back to Grand Island because I know that it is really hard on her going home without my Dad there.  I wish more than anything I could take away those hurtful times that she has to endure.