Last Month in Review

Last night I was asked by a friend if I had abandoned the blog.  I suppose it kind of appears that way, April 21^st was my last post.  I guess I took a sort of blog holiday, a somewhat forced blog holiday with my life being as busy as it was last month.  Here’s a run-down of the last months happenings (prepare yourself, it gets lengthy!)

The end of April was spent with my mom on our Annual Girls Shopping Extravaganza.  My mom and I drove up to Minneapolis and spent some time with my wonderful Aunt Robin and her new husband, it was so good to see them!   We of course squeezed in a little shopping at Mall of America.  Oh yeah, and we always allot an entire day to…IKEA.

This is always the most anticipated shopping portion of our trip.  Normally I like to spend months planning ahead of time to strategically determine my plan of attack when we get there.  Usually I have a list in hand, and have even made sure it was “pre-approved” by the hubby.  Not this time.  This IKEA trip was a complete free-for-all, no real expectations or specific items I was in need of.   I really enjoyed looking at all of the pretty show rooms.

You realize that this doesn’t mean I came out empty handed.  I still managed to spend some serious dough there, but I came away with some great finds.  I’ll report back on these later as I incorporate them into our house.

As customary, we also partook of the delicious IKEA breakfast with Swedish pancakes and lingonberry sauce.

 All of this was only $7, oh wait, I mean free!  The cherry on top of our already wonderful weekend was the fact that we came on “EAT FREE” weekend.  This meant that if we spent over $100 (no problem here) our restaurant receipt was deducted from our total.  So we took full advantage and went back for round two for lunch. 

On our second swing through IKEA (we have to make sure we don’t miss anything!) my mom spotted her super fun cousin Janet.  There was a lot of laughing/crying and talking, and complete disbelief that they ran into each other in the bowels of IKEA.  I however was not so shocked, my mom can run into someone she knows just about anywhere in the country.  Either way, it was great running into her and getting to catch-up!

After a relaxing weekend away I came back to an atypical week at work.  Our hospital is reapplying for Magnet status (an award for nursing excellence), and being on the Magnet committee I was able to spend the week hosting the Magnet appraisers during their site visit.  Going into it I was a little stressed and scared, but it turned out to be a great learning experience.  I took away a lot from the chief nursing officers that I was able to spend the week with and feel that I have a better understanding of our hospital system as a whole.

That weekend Jason and I attended the annual Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting at the Century Link Center.  It was fun to get to see Warren and Charlie in person, they are very entertaining!

My favorite part was probably the model train layout at the BNSF booth.  It reminded me so much of my Grandpa and his layout that he had.

The next week was spent planning and preparing for my friend’s bachelorette party that was co-hosted at my home.  I had a lot of fun just getting ready, but the party itself was even better!  (Pictures not posted to protect the innocent.)

The next day was Mother’s Day and we enjoyed a lovely dinner at the new Mai Thai restaurant in Aksarben Village.  I am addicted to Panang curry, and they have excellent curry there!  We came back to our house for gifts and dessert.  Here are the three generations!

A few days later we left for a wonderfully relaxing trip to South Padre Island, Texas with two other couples.  We spend our time lying on the beach, boogie boarding, eating at restaurants, sightseeing and just having a fabulous time with friends.  I was even brave enough to try para-sailing, which was amazing and not scary at all for someone who is afraid of heights!

This brings us up to speed to this Memorial Day weekend.  Last night we had a small BBQ and hat party at our house with friends.  Thanks to everyone for wearing hats.  It was a great time!

So there are my excuses for not blogging, pretty fun excuses if I do say so!  Hopefully the next few months will allow me a little more time for home improvement activities and blogging, if not, I'm okay with just having fun too.  Happy Memorial Day everyone!