Stay-cation

This past weekend was the teacher-loved MEA weekend. This is the first break teachers are given since the beginning of school, and as all educators know, September (and sometimes January) are the longest months of the school year...so this break is very much looked forward to.

We had big plans to go up north to visit our family. We were going to leave on Thursday morning, and head up to East Grand Forks to spend a few days with my dad (AKA Boppa), and then head even further north to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Adolphson (AKA Grandma Ju Ju and Grandpa Doo-aine). But, on Wednesday morning, Ella woke up with a low-grade fever, so we decided that we were going to stay put.

We were happy to see that even though Ella was under the weather, she still wanted to play and had no problems eating and drinking a lot...of course I was freaking out because I thought she might have the dreaded H1N1...but I don't think that was the case. :) I continued to the a "germ-nazi" and insisted on obsessive hand washing for ALL and even made Jocie and Carl change clothes immediately upon entering the house from school, so nobody else (knock on wood) has gotten sick.

We were all a little bummed because we were looking forward to seeing grandparents, but we still wanted to have a fun weekend. So we decided to do some fun things at home. Here were some of the highlights:

Thursday night - Family Movie Night - rented "Monsters vs. Aliens" popped a lot of popcorn, snacked on Junior Mints and Sour Patch Kids, and washed it all down with Coke and Fanta. We also moved all the furniture in the living room so it was right in front of the TV and turned off all of the lights so we had the real "theater" experience.

Friday - Trip to St. Cloud to shop for a winter coat for Jocie and then onto Granite City for dinner. After dinner, we returned home to watch the Sioux hockey team destroy the Gophers (4 - 0)! Sioux, yeah, yeah!

Saturday - After a morning workout (big commodity for mom) Jocie and I headed to the Mall of America for a little Jocie/mommy outing. We had a blast!!! Lunch at the big food court, then to the American Girl store where jocie got to spend a $50 gift card, then to DSW where she got to pick out 2 new pairs of shoes, then decided to grab some Cold Stone ice cream for an afternoon snack :). Then onto evening Mass. All-in-all fabulous day!

Sunday - The girls re-cooped a little at home, while Carl fished with a buddy all afternoon.

Even though we had looked forward to going home, we had a wonderful weekend just hanging out together!! We need to have "stay-cations" more often!!