Living in a hotel

Since we arrived in Dothan on Friday, July 27th we have been staying at the Residence Inn. Due to the size of our family we were divided into two rooms. The first two nights we were next door to each other in studio rooms. Each room had a king size bed and a queen size pullout. For the remainder of our stay, we were moved into one bedroom suites. The only difference between our first rooms and second ones was having a wall between the bed and sofa couch and an extra television. We kept two separate rooms until August 18th due to the kids returning to their other parents house.

As most people can imagine there are some benefits of living in a hotel: complimentary breakfasts every day, housekeeping, pool, weight room (we actually have a cardio room, not a single weight on the premises!), basketball court, social events each week, housekeeping,pool, housekeeping, pool, and housekeeping! Okay I love the housekeeping aspect. Besides free breakfast every morning with tons of options each day, the kids took advantage of every possible day, hour, and minute they could in the pool with an occasional break to play basketball!

07/28 Night swimming

07/30 The kids remembered they had goggles and started diving for bracelets and hair rubber-bands

08/01 Jarom taking a break during swimming

08/03 Jayson loves following and playing with Jarom, I think they were getting ready to race

08/03 Breanna in her usual spot, under the umbrella with a towel on her head to avoid the sun

08/08 The boys playing keep away after a storm...way too cold for us girls

Of course there are several downfalls to living in a hotel. The primary downfall, living in two different 'small' rooms, cooking for eight people on a 2 burner stove-top, the lack of cooking supplies and equipment, the lack of space for groceries, and we had more days of rain than sunshine. Thankfully, we planned ahead for some down days and brought all the gaming systems, but even those get old after several days. We did invest in a few new games and a couple more decks of playing cards, but lets be honest...we all had days when we were extremely stir crazy and bored out of our mind. Overall, the kids claimed they had a great summer even though they were pretty much confined to the hotel property.