Lunch with Family and Shopping on Saturday

Last Saturday, we had arranged to meet up with the newlyweds (Steve and Shay) for lunch...

... so we headed to Maggiano's to meet them.

Unfortunately, we forgot to get any pictures with them!

After lunch, we drove over to Woodfield Mall to walk around. At the time this mall was opened in 1971, it was the largest mall in the United States and it claimed to be the largest in the world. According to Wikepedia, it is still the 12th largest mall in the US. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodfield_Mall)

It is a multi-level mall --

... not just two levels...

... but in places there are three levels and ramps between.

Even though it is now 50 years old, it has been renovated and does not look overly dated.

The "new" food court (I think since 2018).

The last Sears store in Illinois was here but closed in November, 2021. Another anchor store, Lord & Taylor, had closed in 2020. Regardless of these closings, the mall was quite busy and most of the store locations (other than the two large anchor locations) were occupied.

After getting a bit of a walk at the mall, we figured we hadn't worn ourselves out, so we headed over to walk around IKEA.

It is a three story store... we mainly walked around and looked...

This "laptop" caught our eyes...

... funny message!

Comparing the adjustable desks that they have at IKEA to what we got (we like what we got better as we were able to customize it to what we needed).

It is fun to go out and walk around with "normal" people shopping sometimes, even though we don't want to acquire anything, because bringing something new in means something we already have has to be eliminated!