Shopping Trip 2011

This past weekend my mom, sister and I took our annual shopping trip down to IL.  We think it's been four years now that we've done this.  It's a blast every year.  The first couple years we didn't stay over-night, but then realized shopping the entire weekend would be fun.  So, the last two years we've stayed over Saturday night.

This year's agenda was:
Saturday
6:15am - leave FDL
10:00 - start at outlet mall in Aurora, IL
finish at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg, IL
Stay over in Schaumburg, IL
Sunday
10:00am - get to IKEA as soon as they open
head down to outlet mall in Pleasant Prairie, WI
then head home

Ended up being two VERY full days of shopping... what we love!  We were shopping on Saturday until almost 9pm when the mall closed.  Got supper late (9pm) at Red Robin and then headed to our hotel.

Very memorable stay.  First, we realized our TV wasn't working.  Got the front desk worker to come help us.  She couldn't get it to work, so was going to figure out how to get us a new one.  While she was in our room another hotel guest, very much under the influence, knocked on our door and said to let him in.  He obviously had the wrong room.  He called us a not nice name when we didn't immediately let him in and the hotel worker, who was still in our room (yeah, bad luck on this dudes part), threw open the door and yelled at him for talking to us, her guests, the way he did.  I think she pretty much freaked him out... sobered him up a bit for the moment at least.  She left with him and we waited for news on our TV situation.

The guest again knocked on our door... we think his room was the one across the hall from us and he just kept getting confused.  We called to the front desk again and the security guard came and took care of the guy.

There was a bar right next to our hotel and apparently there was a party there of some sort.  I think we were surrounded by the people who stayed at the hotel after the party.  A bunch of kids who we guessed were in their mid-twenties.  They made a ton of noise as they returned at bar-time... which was an hour later thanks (or no-thanks) to the time change.

We saw the group of kids at breakfast the next morning and just laughed.  They were just kids, being kids... great entertainment for us. : )

We were up early on Sunday, hung out at the hotel for breakfast and got to IKEA in plenty of time.  We shopped there for a couple hours and then headed down to the next outlet mall.  We were there until almost 5pm I think.  I got home on Sunday around 7pm.

Very full, fun weekend with my mom and sister!

The most memorable part of this shopping trip is that we bought a total of 11 pairs of shoes!  This was the year of the shoes I guess.  Most for various people for Christmas... but, a few for us, too. : )

Wish I could remember all the reasons for our laughs.  We tend to do a lot of laughing when we do this... and, some out of control laughing fits!!  One, in particular, was when my Mom told us the story of her phone incident at work... "hello" "hello", "that was weird" "that was weird"... hilarious!  We also get many laughs still from the Slidey/Slimey (whatever it was) purchase a couple years ago... man, we laugh so hard about that to this day!!

Mike asked me how many times we got annoyed with each other throughout the weekend.  I was very proud to say... NEVER!  We get along so well... I love my mom and sister so much!  We have a great relationship and really never argue or get into fights over things.  Love it!

I'm already looking forward to next year!! : )