5 hyper kids, 3 moms and IKEA

I have to admit, I love IKEA. So when I found out that a friend of mine hadn't been there yet, we had to go. Three of us packed up the children we have not in school, and headed down. 4 of the 5 children are little boys all under age 4, which should give you a general idea on how things went. The awesome thing about IKEA is that they have a playland where you can drop your kids off, get a beeper in case something happens and do some shopping. So we took advantage of that big time. However, if we had been really smart and thought it through, we would have looked at all of the displays first with our kids (because they only get 1 hour in playland) and then on the shopping floor put them in playland. Oh well, lesson learned. We ended up carting all the kids. Still, it is amazing what kids can do from the inside of a cart. It was mostly fighting with eachother and being excessively loud, but they still managed to grab onto racks. And my son has been known for sneaking things into the cart because "I like it". We still had a ton of fun, and who can beat 50 cent hot dogs for lunch for the kiddos? Okay, maybe not the healthiest lunch, but they loved it, and us moms were able to get in some meaningful conversation, which doesn't always happen at get togethers. The other thing that I thought a lot about as we meandered through IKEA was this, there were 5 kids there. That is one more than what we will have by ourselves after our adoption. It was, I will admit, a "moment" for me. We will have four children! So then I tried to imagine myself going on a lovely shopping trip to IKEA with four children. Then I thought about grocery shopping with four children, clothes shopping, going to the park, almost every imaginable scenario I imagined us with four kids. I have to admit, it will be an adjustment going from 2 kids to 4, but I am soooo excited! Okay, it may not exactly be as easy to do all of the above mentioned items with 4 kids in tow. But it will be double the love and learning, and man, are we pumped. Plus, I have some amazing friends who have 3 or more children, so I will get all of the organizing tips and suggestions from them. We will be blessed beyond belief by our new children. Now, I only have to remain patient until we get them....