Family, the Zoo, and IKEA.

I know it's been a long while since my last post, but an eventful midweek-weekend has made it requisite to do so now.

It all started on Wednesday, when Deidra came and picked me up from work. We made it over to the church for our church's blood drive. I like giving blood, but mainly for the treats. They hooks us up pretty well with Oreos, pretzels, trail mix, peanut butter/cheese crackes, Fig Newtons, and some great flavors of Welch's juice. It could almost take the place of dinner - but not quite.

After giving blood, we headed to Ogden, where my dad's side of the family was having a get-together. Deidra finally met my Uncle Larry, only 22 months into our marriage. I think that was the last family member on either side of either family that had not been met by the spouse. So we can check that off of our list. A lot of my cousins and their kids were also there. It was fun to see everyone and talk for a while. My parents were there with their two-year-old granddaughter (our niece), Stevie, who they are watching for a few days.

We then head just down the road to Riverdale, where we stayed the night (with my parents and Stevie) at the old Red Roof Inn, which apparently used to be a Motel 6 and recently was changed back to a Motel 6 - go figure.

The next morning (I had taken the day off from work), we got up, had breakfast at IHOP, dropped my piano keyboard off in Bountiful to get fixed, and then went to the Hogle Zoo.



Stevie enjoyed seeing the elephants, monkeys, alligators, snakes, camels, rhinos, and giraffes. But her favorite was this little bird that came right up to her (behind a glass enclosure). She tried tapping on the glass to touch it, and finally stared kissing the bird through the glass. It was pretty funny, and maybe a little bit disgusting. Who knows what else has touched that glass.

We left the zoo a little bit before noon and convinced my parents that we should go have lunch and shop at IKEA.



We got there right as the lunch hour was in full swing, and Deidra and I enjoyed a red pepper & mozzarella sandwich and chicken Caesar salad. My parents got Stevie some macaroni and cheese, but she spent most of the meal stealing lettuce from my dad's salad and nibbling on it like a cute little bunny rabbit.

Once lunch was over we started shopping, but my parents didn't last long. We said our goodbyes and they headed home while we continued meandering through IKEA. We came away with four new chairs for our dining room. First, we got two of these chairs:



And then we got two of these folding chairs (also in white, but they didn't have that color on their website pictures) that we can pull out when we have company over:



We also got some little stuff - a jar to fill with candy in my office, an apron that Deid fell in love with, and a shaker that we're going to fill up with powdered sugar.

I had originally suggested also making a stop at NPS, but after IKEA, we didn't have any desire to spend any more money. So we traveled home and put our new furniture together, and now here we are.

So maybe it's not a gut-wrenching story that tugs at your heart strings, or one that makes you laugh so hard you cry, but at least I finally blogged - so you better appreciate it.