This last weekend was wonderful! My mom and sister came to visit. They arrived early Saturday morning and we quickly unloaded a few things from the van. I love having home cooked food and some treats, so I had asked my mom to bring me some. I got those things in the fridge and unloaded some of my mom and sister's overnight bags.
We headed to Des Moines, to the Jordan Creek Town Center. It is a pretty quick drive to a mall and lots of great shopping. We started off spending some time in T.J. Maxx, finding some fun things to purchase. What go us out of the store was that we were hungry!
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| ^^At Fuddruckers for burgers and fries - where we got to top our own burgers.^^ |
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| ^^Us having fun trying on some fuzzy jackets in Hollister.^^ |
After lunch we went to the mall. I think this is one of the best malls. It isn't too big, but they have a variety of stores. Some of the my favorites (or at least to look around in) are: Gap, J. Crew, Pottery Barn, William-Sonoma. And, they are even getting an Anthropology!
We took a little shopping break to get an afternoon treat. There is The Cheesecake Factory in the mall that everyone raves about. None of us have ever been to one, so we decided to go there. I am not a big cheesecake fan (I had only had it once), so I wasn't sure if I would like it. I was thinking there might be something else there I could get. But, there were a ton of different flavors of cheesecake, so I decided to try it. We got the our treat to go, so that we wouldn't have to sit in the restaurant (and tip anyone), and went to eat it out in the food court. I got the chocolate mousse cheesecake and it was actually pretty good!
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| ^^First bite.^^ |
After shopping in the mall, we ran into Trader Joe's quickly. We shopped all afternoon and still didn't get to all the places we wanted to! We wanted to get back to Ames to see a movie.
We got to the movie just in time. We went to Woodlawn. Truthfully, it was kind of boring... but, there was popcorn.
After the movie, we just headed back to my dorm and went to bed. It was fun having a little sleepover right in my dorm room (my roommate was gone for the weekend).
The next morning, we headed out to do a little more shopping. This time we just stayed in Ames.
At Iowa State, there is an adorable horse barn. The one thing that my sister really wanted to see while visiting were the horse. By the time we were done shopping, it was lunch time and getting kind of late for my mom and sister to head home. We needed to get some lunch, which I really wanted to go to my favorite place, The Cafe. We ended up getting some deli sandwiches to go from The Cafe, to go and have a little picnic lunch out at the horse bar. It was a beautiful autumn day. While my mom and I sat and ate our lunch, Sarah was able to visit the horses. Perfect!
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| ^^When we were picking up our sandwiches, my mom and sister found some raw sugar cubes sitting out for coffee. They decided to take some to bring to the horses.^^ |
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| ^^My mom's favorite deli sandwich is the ham + asparagus. This is one of my favorites too. ^^ |
Thanks Mom, and Sarah, for the wonderful weekend! It was great seeing you and spending time together.
