To Ikea we go!

I desperately needed to get out of our small town last weekend and Brandon actually had the weekend off, so we went on a little adventure. I needed to see a freeway, cars, billboards, stores...and of course, the ocean. I didn't spend much time at the beach when I lived in San Diego, but now I wish I had. I guess just living near the ocean was enough for me. But now, I crave the ocean. It's so beautiful and big. And I needed to see that. So we decided to venture off to Connecticut to visit the nearest Ikea and see the Atlantic Ocean.

Brandon was so excited for our trip to Ikea!

The nearest Ikea is 2 hours away from my little town in the Berkshires! It's one of the drawbacks of small town living...no good stores nearby. We didn't really have anything in mind that we needed to purchase at Ikea, but I wanted to venture around the store and buy things I didn't even know I wanted. 

The two hour drive seemed like a 4 hour drive. It wasn't that much fun. And when we went got inside Ikea, I remembered it was Sunday and that I hate crowds. There were people everywhere. The Ikea we went to was in New Haven, where Yale University is! I am guessing that is why there is an Ikea there. Anyways, there were way too many people roaming the store for me, so we zipped through the showroom and went straight to the marketplace, where we found very few things we wanted to buy. It was such a disappointment. I was ready and willing to spend money, but alas, it wasn't in our stars that day. 

We left with the most pitiful basket. We had 5 things in our basket and when we got to check out, where had to leave my scarf hanger there because I grabbed the display one. The cashier was less than nice. She refused to let me take that one home and didn't even offer to have an employee run and grab me a new one. It wasn't worth it to me to wander back through the mazes of Ikea to find the hanger, so we just let it go. We ended up spending more in gas than we did at Ikea. Oh well. I probably will not be venturing to Ikea anytime soon...at least not on the weekend and I will make sure I have a list in hand.

The best part was going to see the ocean after our disastrous trip to Ikea. There was snow on the sand at the beach. It was very different than the beaches in San Diego. But still very comforting to see and feel the ocean breeze on my face. I actually think the part of ocean we saw was the Long Island Sound. I am pretty sure far off in the distance, you may not even be able to see it on the picture, but that's Long Island! Pretty cool, I thought.

On the way home, our GPS took us the weird way and we drove through some really small but beautiful, historic towns of Connecticut. We were anxious to get home, so we didn't stop but it was nice scenery for our drive. I am hoping our next little adventure is a little more exciting and successful than this one. But I think I have several weeks to plan it, because my hard working husband will be busy changing people's lives (taking people to MEPS to go to bootcamp) the next couple of weekends. 

Oh and great news, Brandon put up 3 kids for February's mission! That's really good!