If you missed them, check out Part One here, Part Two here and Part Three here.

So what’s it been like living in a hotel for a week? Well, it’s been good and bad. At first it was frustrating, but after a day it started to feel like a mini vacation.

I don’t have to cook because there’s no stove, so we’re eating out almost every meal, and we rarely eat out, only a couple times a month probably. We get to watch real TV, we don’t have cable TV at home, just a roku box with Netflix and Hulu on it. Someone will come and make the beds and empty the trash cans and bring us clean towels if we want (we actually only use housekeeping every third day or so). The hotel has a breakfast bar with a variety of bad-for-me pastries that I never get to eat, like cinnamon buns! There are fresh baked cookies in the lobby every evening. All good and fun things!

BUT all that got old by day four. We don’t actually eat out because it’s expensive and reasonably priced restaurant food is just not that good. We’re so used to making our own food from fresh, unprocessed ingredients that everything we eat out tastes way over-seasoned, over-salted, over-buttered, over-sweetened. I mean it’s fine for one meal, but it just gets gross after a few days. And I’m talking about every place we’ve gone to. They are all like that.

TV was fun at first, but really, I don’t know how you guys do it with little kids at home. I can’t flip through the channels without covering Eleanor’s eyes and ears. I never noticed before how much scariness and violence there is on tv. Really, I was surprised. I don’t mind if she sees some nudity or hears some language (I promise to write a post about this) but we really don’t want her to see too much violence at this age, and it is on every single channel! So annoying. It makes me very happy we don’t have cable TV at home.

The trashcans are tiny, so they are always overfull. I’m sick of leaving tips for the housekeepers for doing what I should be doing myself at home. I’m sick of paying to do our laundry. I’m getting fat(ter) from breakfast pastry and evening cookies. I’m finding it hard to work from the hotel. Apparently, I’m very attached to my routine at home. And I JUST WANT TO GO HOME! Josh is about as frustrated as I am.

Eleanor, on the other hand, is having a great time. She thinks it’s a super fun adventure. Except for the fact that we have to get up extra early to take Josh to his commuter bus stop. He usually takes the local from home or rides his bike, but there’s no bus from the hotel and we don’t have his bike. She loves being at the hotel, the staff at the front desk know her by name and she stops to talk to them on her way in and out of the hotel. Although, we’re having to put her on time out more often because a hotel room is just not big enough for a rambunctious three-year old.

It’s Monday morning and we are not home yet. It’s Day 10 of the Mold Saga and I’m flipping out!