Nice ass hooks

This past weekend we were visited by Grannie Elaine as she arranged a quick visit on her way back to Nebraska from a work trip in New Jersey. And of course Grannie insisted on spoiling the kids as all good grannies do. So we headed down to IKEA to pick up some Christmas present for the kids since its kind of hard to bring a play kitchen on an airplane to Nebraska! IKEA was great and I was incredibly impressed with the lengths the company goes to to accommodate families with children. We loaded up our flatbed with a play kitchen, a table and chair set, and a storage unit for the children's ever expanding toy collection. Then on Sunday morning a Mom recovering from too much champagne the night before and one patient Grannie put together all the toys for the eagerly awaiting children.

Conner and Lizzie loved their new kitchen. Conner first put his snuggly blanket into the microwave, probably hoping to nuke all the nasty things living in it. Lizzie liked pretending to wash her hands in the sink and using her new step stool to reach the microwave.

And the new table and chairs come in handy for eating an afternoon snack while watching Sesame Street. Seriously, have we reached the ultimate in laziness yet? Please disregard Lizzie's outfit in the picture, she was out of clean shirts at school and was put into one of Conner's shirts. And the pants, well, tye-dyed pants are standard issue at the Montessori school!

But my favorite purchase of all at IKEA were some hooks for the wall in the form of a dog's rear end. They were just too cute to pass up and I thought they would be perfect for hanging up the kid's backpacks on. Chris scoffed at them when I brought them home but then I hung them up on the wall and as soon as Chris noticed them he commented on the nice ass hooks. Indeed, those are some nice ass hooks.