Exotic Vacation to I.KEA

So, here we are on vacation! We made our second trip to I.K.EA today. Oh. My. Goodness. Mr. X commented that it's a good thing we brought such a small van :) Otherwise, we might try to bring home the whole store. So far, we've bought two cribs and two dressers, with one changing-table top thing to put on top of the dresser. We had to go back today, because there was only one crib available yesterday--they had to put more out on the floor for today. Today, we also bought a new desk for me and a drawing table/desk for Mr. X--he's wanted one for years, and I'm so happy we bought it! I have no artistic talent, but he really does, and I'm glad he's got the drawing table. We found a kitchen cart that will work to get our printers (we have three!) off the floor and desks. I think we'll actually have a functional home office when we get home! We bought legs for a table top that we want to put on the back porch (the table top's been in our downstairs for five years. Five. Years.). And then we bought a few random items--a cutting board Mr. X really liked, some glasses (most of our glasses have broken over the last couple of years and we never think to replace them), some little child-proofing latches. It was really funny, because neither of us had ever been to an IK.EA, but Mr. X is always coming up with ideas for designs of different items and will sketch them out and tell me about them--the drawing table and the cutting board we bought (along with several other things we saw in the store) were almost identical to his ideas. The good thing is that we've spent almost exactly what I anticipated, but ended up with a lot more for our money than I thought we'd get!

We may go back again tomorrow.

So, let's see, what else . . . My progesterone dropped again. The nurse from PPVI called while we were on the road and told me to resume the injections. Unfortunately, I left everything at home! My local doctor (have I mentioned how great he is lately?) called in the prescription for me and we actually were able to get the progesterone and syringes locally with little trouble, thank God! Things seem to be going fine with the baby girl. I was having some really bad round ligament pain for a couple of months, but that seems to have pretty much stopped--I guess the ligaments gave up and just stretched already. We've gotten really good news on the adoption in the past week, too. We made it past three more paperwork steps. I'm still keeping track of everything so that I can post about our process once we've got our little guy home . . . which should be soon, I hope! So, all is well on the baby front right now.

The nearest I.KEA to us is in Utah, so we had a looong drive, and we're spending the weekend here just relaxing, which is great. This morning, we went to hear the M.ormon Tab.ernacle Ch.oir. It was pretty cool--they had a military band as the special guest and performed patriotic music, so it was a fun thing to do for Memorial Day. Temple Square was really interesting, too. Afterwards, we went to the cathedral for mass, and found to our delight that they have an amazing choir. The deacon gave a really good homily, and the music was a few older, traditional English hymns, and then Renaissance music for the mass setting and a few motets. When I heard the choir without seeing them (they were singing in the chapel for Lauds as we were coming in for mass), I assumed it was an adult choir, but most were children or teenagers. It was really impressive!

We're going to head out for dinner in a little while, and we're going to spend some more time tomorrow in the U.inta Fo.rest (we did a bit of exploring yesterday) when the weather is nicer (I forgot an umbrella when we were packing and got completely soaked walking to mass). Yesterday was actually my birthday--yay! Any guesses how old I am now? :)