An Update On Our Month-Long Hotel Stay

We’ve been living in a hotel for the last month, and here’s how it’s going. Plus an update on the new house and when we move in!

 

Boys’ white shirts (these are moisture wicking and so comfortable!!)
Boys’ Shorts
Boys’ shoes are linked HERE

 

 

An update on our month long hotel stay

Tomorrow officially marks four weeks of living in a hotel.

If you missed why we were living in a hotel in the first place, READ THIS POST.

So, after four weeks of living in a tiny place with three small children, you might ask (and many of you have)…how are we doing?

 

The short answer is we’re actually doing much better than I expected.

In some ways it feels like these four weeks have flown by. In other ways, I can hardly remember a time when we didn’t live in a hotel. Ha!

But overall it’s been fun and happy and we’ve just tried to stay positive and maintain a somewhat normal life.

 

The biggest blessings during our hotel stay

Swim team. Who knew it would be such a blessing to have swimming practice twice a day??? At first I dreaded it, but I have loved that it has gotten us out of the house early basically every single day. Practice is at 7:45 every morning, and once the boys got over their initial dislike of swim team (it was much harder than they expected!), they wanted to go every morning.

We also went and got bagels or donuts after practice every time they went, so that made it fun.

Getting out of the hotel room for several hours every day has made us all much happier.

 

The hotel amenities. We’ve had access to a beautiful gym (that is almost always empty), a great pool (that is also almost always empty), a sports court to play basketball, free breakfast every morning with waffles, eggs, bacon and sausage, fruit, yogurt, cereal — literally a dream for my children, and happy hour a few times a week with food. Plus housekeeping every day. The hotel has been wonderful. We couldn’t have picked a better spot.

By the way, we’re staying at a Homewood Suites, if you’re interested.

 

Friends who let us come over and do laundry. There are laundry facilities at the hotel, but they cost $2/load to wash, and $2/load to dry. With laundry for five people, that could add up very quickly. So I asked a friend if she’d be willing to let me use her laundry room, and then a week after we used it, she texted me again and asked if we were ready to do laundry again? Guys, Texas hospitality is real. The people here are so good to us.

 

A positive attitude. I won’t pretend I’ve been completely positive through this entire month — I’ve certainly had my days of frustration and stress. But overall we’ve all been able to stay very positive and just enjoy the summer together, even if it’s in a little tighter quarters than we planned. I’ve tried really hard to not project any kind of unhappiness on my kids, and I think they’ve had the summer of their lives. I mean, cinnamon toast crunch and bacon and eggs and waffles for breakfast every morning? Adjusting back to real life is going to be rough.

 

The most challenging things about our hotel stay

I think we all to some degree feel like we’re on vacation. But we still have responsibilities and work and deadlines and commitments. So although it feels like a month in a hotel should be all fun and games (and some of it is), it’s been difficult to find a good balance of staying on top of work and still be a fun mom.

I feel this every summer, when my kids are out of school, but I think being in a hotel makes it feel even more like we’re on vacation.

 

Finding a routine. Summer never has a great routine, and usually I like that flexibility and freedom. But this feeling of limbo, mixed with no routine, is messing with all of us a little bit. We all feel more tired, it’s been harder for me to stay motivated to be healthy, and I feel like I’m constantly behind.

So what’s next? When do we move into our new house?

The short answer — we’re moving in this weekend!! WOOHOO!

Our house was supposed to be done last weekend, and we were going to sign on it this weekend. But our project manager went out of town for two weeks and unfortunately nothing got done during that time. So that was going to put us another three weeks behind schedule. Lame.

We fought them on “several weeks,” and miraculously they were able to get almost everything done in under a week and keep us on schedule. MIRACLE.

But it was a stressful week, because the delay news came in after we had confirmed the closing date multiple times with the builder. We thought we would have to reschedule our movers and furniture delivery and tons of other things for this weekend, and the logistics for adjusting all of those is time consuming. So the fact that it can all stay as planned is phenomenal, and a huge blessing.

 

Overall, the month in the hotel has been wonderful. We’ve enjoyed our time here, we’ve grown very close as a family, we’ve discovered we can really live with a very small amount, and it’s made us super grateful for everything we do have, especially our big, beautiful, new house. Grateful, grateful, grateful.

And now, we’re very grateful that it’s coming to an end!

If you have any other questions about our hotel stay, leave a comment! Or check out or PACKING LIST of what we brought with us RIGHT HERE.