The Largest IKEA in the World

Today, we made great strides into making our new home more comfortable and practical for us. Josh and I walked the kids to school and then came home and unpacked, reorganized what was already here and fixed a few things that were not up to snuff. I continued my laundry project and finally managed to get caught up just from the five days since we left home! Here is a picture of my little washing machine and crazy closet dryer. A load of laundry takes more than an hour and fifty minutes to wash and then, with the dryer turned up to max heat and air flow, almost three hours to dry! Crazy!  The dishwasher takes more than two hours for a load too. We never understood this in France and do not understand it any better now. You certainly can't do a "quick" load!  After organizing this morning, we came up with a pretty lengthy list of things that we needed from IKEA, so we walked to the city center where we caught the free hourly IKEA bus to take us to the largest IKEA store in the world. It took about 20 minutes to get there and then the next five hours to find our way around the store and to find most of the things that we needed! Oh my gosh, it was confusing, exhausting, and exciting all at the same time. There was not one word written in English so even following the store map was next to impossible and trying to find sheets was enough to pull your hair out! Europeans always use just a duvet and a duvet cover instead of flat sheets on their bed and Swedes just use a very thin mattress over a mattress/box spring combo so their fitted sheets are either strange or non-existent. Since our beds are not due to arrive for awhile, we needed to find some solution. Last night, Calvin slept on the couch, Max slept in a sleeping bag on the floor and Tabitha slept on a bare bed with just a blanket.  After looking around IKEA forever, we finally came up with some small thin mattresses for the boys and sheets and blankets for the rest of us. Whew!  We also needed kitchen items, towel bars, waste baskets, etc. So, when our arms were too full to carry any more, we checked out. We had been told that we could take all of our purchases downstairs after paying to have them shipped to our home for us. IKEA will deliver everything that you bought, no matter how big or how much to your home in Stockholm for $40, that same day!  We could never get everything home on the bus so we took this option. Unfortunately, after waiting in line for almost 30 min, we reached the shipping guy at the counter only to have him tell us that he was not the shipping guy, he was the returns guy!  Ugh!! Spoken English is a beautiful thing but we apparently need all of our signs to be in English as well!  We finally got into the correct line and made our way  back home.  The kids had another good day at school although Max was frustrated with his beginner's Swedish class because he  felt so behind and Tabtiha felt the same way about her honors math class. They will catch up but it did cause some exhaustion this afternoon. Calvin had his first drum lesson and his first technology class which he really enjoyed.  He also started taking chess as an enrichment class.  He was also the first of the kids to want to walk home alone. I think he was tired of the family of five with the dog, walking him to and from high school each day!