There's nothing like an IKEA opening
I returned from SXSW at around 10pm on Tuesday night. The plan was to get up really, really early on Wednesday morning to head to the grand opening of IKEA West Chester just outside Cincinnati (which is around 90 minutes from Louisville). This is now the closest IKEA to us. Previously, we would have to drive 4 hours to get our inexpensive, Scandinavian-inspired home furnishings from the IKEA in Schaumburg, IL.

Unfortunately, I couldn't drag myself out of bed until around 9am, so we didn't make it to IKEA until around noon.

By that time, the entire area around the store was a madhouse. Traffic was backed up to I-75, the police were called in to direct traffic and an entire team of people were brought in just to route cars into the parking lot. Fortunately, we were swerve around some orange cones and slip into a newly-vacant parking spot right near the front of store.



Outside, there were news crews and tons of gawkers milling around; however, inside, it was the IKEA that we all know and love :) For the opening event, they had magicians, facepainting and balloons for the kids. Mahlon got a balloon shaped like a sword, Miles got one like a snake (complete with red tongue) and Mira got a balloon man.

After shopping for about an hour, we grabbed some lunch in the IKEA restaurant. The line there made the line at the Google Party at SXSW seem reasonable. You can't really complain, though, when a family of 6 can eat (and get two free "Free coffee for life" IKEA travel mugs) for $18.



We only had a couple of items on our shopping list; however, we still managed to spend about $175. Of course, we've spent 5-10 times as much on previous trips, so I consider myself pretty lucky.



Once we checked out, the biggest challenge was fighting through the crowd to get out the door and to our van.

Overall, it was a fun trip and it's good to finally have an IKEA close by.