Home Sweet Home - for now. We spent 23 nights at this Marriott Residence Inn in Sandy.
Our room was a suite with 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a living room, small table and kitchenette. We were very comfortable for our long stay. I was able to come up with several quick and easy meals in our limited space and many nights we spent eating with family. One very sweet family in our new ward even had us over for dinner and family home evening one night. We were, of course, anxious to get into our new home but I quite enjoyed our time at the hotel. We had a fun time and took advantage of all the perks as much as we could.
On days when we weren't in a hurry to get to school, we enjoyed
leisurely breakfasts in the dining area. We tried doing breakfast here one morning before school, but it just took to long and it backfired when Angela spilled hot chocolate and we had to hurry and change back in the room.
We went swimming almost every day after school! That was the girls treat for getting their reading done most days. They loved hotel life!
We had cousins join us a few times too!
One night we had a Halloween themed cousin swim party at our pool! All of the kids got little pumpkins that floated in the water! (o: We had a great time!
I quite enjoyed my morning routine. After getting the girls off to school, I returned and had a relaxing breakfast in the dining room. Marriott has the best breakfasts. This is one of the reasons I gained some weight during our move, I'm sure. (o: But I tried to even it out by using the treadmill in the fitness room!
I also rather enjoyed the room service at the hotel. When one of the girls had an accident in the bed, I made a phone call and two nice ladies magically appeared and remade the bed with clean linens for me all while I sat on my rear end and read a book! Stupendous!! When I left to run errands, I would come back to find the dishes in the dishwasher, the garbage taken out, the sinks cleaned and the beds made. Woohoo!! I savoured each pampering moment at the hotel.
The only thing that was a bummer was that the hotel was 15 minutes away from the girls school. So every morning we made the treck. Every mid-morning, I made the treck to get Angela and every afternoon I went back again to get Natalie and Sarah. We did a lot of driving! We also attended our ward for several weeks with the commute. One of the things I did NOT miss was all the commuting when we were done with the hotel.
Another downer was that because we didn't have a lot of control over when we would finally get the house and coordinate our movers to bring our things - we didn't know for a while exactly how long we'd be there. By the time we did and notified the hotel, they informed us that our room was not available that long. So about 5 or 6 days before our move into the house - we had to move to a different hotel room at the opposite end of the building! This was a HUGE pain in the butt. We were so settled into our room after almost three weeks it took us several trips. I didn't want to pack all the way up only to unpack for just a few more days. So we threw things onto a cart and went back and forth with all our stuff for what felt like 20 trips - it probably was close to that. It took us about 2 hours. That night was a low point. I was so sick of moving stuff and packing stuff and not having a place to call our own. I was not a happy camper that night. All I could do was count the hours until we were DONE and had a place to call home.
Except for that discouraging night, we had a lovely stay at the Marriott. We got to know the friendly kitchen staff by the end. We enjoyed the evening socials in the dining room many nights - they would have soup night, teryaki burger night, cinnamon roll and hot chocolate night, samples of yummy cheeses one night, etc. It was a fun time, but it was also awesome when we finally got to pack up for the last time and head HOME!
