where i've been

Well HELLO friends!! It's been awhile! :-) I was going to do the whole **tap tap...... this thing on?** bit, but it's late and I'm sitting in a dark hotel room, my two boys on the pull-out sofa and Livia on a little cot under the window with her pink giraffe and a small army of water bottles on her bedside table. I didn't intentionally take a 3 month blog break, but I thought I'd pop in to let you know what's been going on. Our family of 5 (and really the tiny tornado counts as 3 people herself), has been living at the Marriott since March 15th.

It's April 8th.

The insanity is starting to set in.

There is a much longer version to this story, but the cliff notes version is that we sold our house before the one we're building is ready. This was due largely in part to a huge cabinet fiasco (read: us choosing these super fantastic upgraded modern cabinets that turned out to be giant rectangles of poo). So we had to have 5 bathrooms, the mudroom, the laundry room aaaaand the entire kitchen cabinets ripped out of our new house. Not fun. Then we had to race to find a custom cabinet company that could squeeze us in and get us back on track. I'm happy to say our new cabinets have been installed and we are nearing the home stretch. The wood floors are being sanded this week! Big happy face.

We thought a hotel would be our best living arrangement because most apartments require a 3 month minimum and we only needed about a month. So while 700 square feet, 1 bathroom and 1 closet might feel a little tight... on the upside our room has a full sized kitchen, and there is a gym, pool, and a basketball court.. and complimentary o'duerves in the lobby every Monday-Thursday evening. And someone makes my bed and does my dishes every day. :-) Always the silver lining.

To add another layer to the story, we're taking the kids on a Disney cruise and we leave April 19th. We're headed to Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and St. John. I don't think our home will be ready before we leave. But no problemo!! Life is good and my kids are healthy so I really can't complain. We have 3 storage units, 4 rooms at hubby's office filled floor to ceiling, and half of my parents' home filled to the brim. I think it's going to feel like Christmas opening up all of our things! :-) We will be gone for 10 days, so I'm praying our home will be ready and waiting for us!

A couple little snafu's have also been resolved. There was a little miscommunication between me and hubby, and the box I had packed and boldly labeled "Shorts!!! Cruise!!" was misplaced and feared to be in the back of 1 of the 3 storage units. Behind all the furniture. Having to buy shorts for 10 days for a family of 5? Pricey. But God smiled on us last weekend during our frantic search. It was the FIRST box we touched!! (I won't embarrass Doron by telling you that he jumped up and down and screamed like a girl when the box was found. But since he would be the one crawling over the mattresses and hauling out a houseful of furniture, I'll give him a free pass on that one). Also, there was a MAJOR snafu with hubby's passport. He didn't become a U.S. citizen until 2001 and he couldn't find his naturalization paperwork. No U.S. birth certificate? No paperwork? No cruise. And it was already booked. God smiled on us again, and it was found in a box with some old photos in the garage.

And because a post is no good without pictures, I'll leave you with some recent Instagram photos.

Oh WAIT!!! I almost forgot!! GUESS WHO JUST TURNED 4????!! That's right... this little señorita!! (Pardon her matted down hotel hair. Not to worry, she still has her beautiful curls!!) :-)

I hope to get back on the picture taking bandwagon when we're in our new house and settled. I don't even know if I remember how to use my camera... and as I was uploading these photos, I realized Photobucket has totally changed and I could barely find my way around. Yikes.

OK, back to the iPhone pics.

And one more thing. It's not often that I crack myself up, but it happens on occasion. If you follow me on Instagram, you've already heard this joke. Look at the middle picture in the top row. Livia is the one wearing the hot pink tutu. I titled the photo "the day Livia was out-tutu'd." Get it? The little girl to her right with a tutu 5 times bigger than hers? Oh yeah. Good stuff.




Sooo... that's where I've been and what we've been up to. I probably won't pop in again until after our cruise, so I'll see you sometime in May! Happy Spring, friends! xoxo