Everyone needs to check out an IKEA store sometime! Even if the modern furniture, decor, and accessories don't do it for you, the 99¢ breakfast certainly will!! But, seriously, if you ever want to experience great customer service or extraordinary attention to detail, IKEA is a must visit.

At IKEA, parents don't have to drag their less than enthusiastic children through the store. They can check tem into Småland, where a giant bushel basket top welcomes kids into their own age appropriate environment, and mom or dad or both can browse three spacious floors without interruption. For an hour, mom and dad can trek through the showroom and warehouse areas knowing that their kids are safe and being thoroughly entertained. At the end of their stay in Småland, kids fill out their own evaluation forms to rate their experience. Småland is just one of the ways IKEA insures that its first-time customers will come back time and time again.

Oh yeah, out of the hundreds of thousands of people in the Twin Cities, guess who we happened upon in IKEA. The woman who sat beside us on our flight yesterday!

After IKEA, we took off across the street to the Mall of America. Talk about overwhelming. I thought Goldsboro was ahead of the game with two Starbucks. There are two Starbucks just in that Mall. But that's nothing. There are FOUR Caribou Coffee Stores!!

But the number of stores is just the beginning of the story. The mall is so large that it has its own indoor amusement park--an entire amusement park! I had heard about a roller coaster inside the mall... there's actually two, along with a Ferris Wheel, a water flume, swings, miniature golf course, haunted house, carousel, and other things you'd expect to see at Six Flags, King's Dominion, Busch Gardens, etc. But right there in the middle of the huge shopping complex a thousand miles from home, we met three brothers who were born in Franklin County, not far from where Amy and I first lived when we moved to NC a decade ago. They were in Minnesota for a family reunion with another brother who lives in St. Paul. I guess every time I need reminding it becomes crystal clear... It's a small world after all.

After the Mall of America, we began our journey south to Iowa. I was pretty anxious to see the countryside. We saw miles and miles of dark rolling hills covered with corn seedlings. Just across the Iowa state line were anywhere from 50 to 75 windmills churning out electricity. We arrived in Clear Lake, went to the wedding rehearsal, and drove out to the rehearsal dinner on Clear Lake. The locals told us that Clear Lake is one of only two natural lakes in the state of Iowa. The next day, the locals were hosting a Walleye tournament--fishermen from all over the Midwest were expected to descend on Clear Lake for the weekend... just in time for the wedding.