May 26, 2016

A couple of very important life lessons:

 
Look how little they were exactly one year ago on moving day! 


A few days ago we celebrated ONE YEAR of being in our house!! WHAAAAAT!?!?! Thanks Timehop for letting me know! Honestly, things were SO crazy a year ago with renovations and packing and being pregnant that I hadn't kept the exact day in my memory banks- its hard enough to remember THREE KIDS birthdays. Whew! Tough stuff. 
So thanks to my time hop app I learned that we'd been doing life in our house for a whole 366 days. Of course, come to find out, the house itself clearly remembered that it had been exactly a year because it chose that day exactly to give us the typical first anniversary gift, and allow the HVAC to go the way of the ghost and start leaking water into our garage. We then learned several things: 

1. Our warranty company had lied to us the year before when we'd questioned them about the A/C-saying that we thought it might need replacing. They'd said "ooooh noooo, its totally fine!"  Ok. Just kidding. Maybe "lie" is a strong word. Maybe when they look at something that's totally rusted out they think that actually means "could probably survive another year."- poTAto/PoTAAAto. 

2. When the house was inspected only one year before they'd failed to mention that the A/C was not up to code- and had RANDOM venting and piping going into crazy-and unhealthy places. Like, say, our guest bathroom ( venting) and the garage ( piping). Cool. Very cool. Sorry Bro-in-law who lived in our guest suite for about 7 months, hope you don't have any long lasting effects of the weird venting business. EEEEKKK! 

3.Apparently our savings account was about to be depleted. like whoa. HVACs are Not. Cheap. 

So, so much learning. So much growing as a person. Honestly, could it GET any better when it comes to being all grown up!?!! I submit not! When you're playing house when you're 7 years old THESE were the moments I tried to replicate: vetting a/c repair companies and trying to decide just how much money you can afford to give over up front and how much you're going to have to be forced to pay over time. YAY! That's exactly how I played house as a kid. *sigh* 

As I joked with Brett, I'm SO glad that we decided to go away to the beach last weekend because its clearly the last VACAY we're having for a long while.

 ( side note: I hate debt. The first debt we'd had since we were very first married was buying our house last year, I kept telling myself that having a house note is NOT THE SAME THING, but in my mind it is and I won't be fully happy again until we don't have any debt at all, that said, sometimes your A/C dies and you live in a city where you need an A/C 10 months out of the year and those apparently cost a fortune and you have to go into debt for that...and apparently a lot of people think debt is no big deal, but it will seriously eat away at me until this is paid off...so sorry, that's just me making a mountain out of a mole hill. Promise I will now stop complaining about my little bitty problems. Sigh. )

Speaking of, have you ever taken a "quick weekend vacation" with three kids under the age of 6?! Its cool. real cool. But seriously. I've learned a couple of things that will make that vacation a success and here they are: 


1. Don't get a hotel room! You can find a beach house for the same price, sometimes cheaper! Airbnb, Vrbo, they all make it SUPER easy to find something that'll fit your needs. 


2. Make sure said beach house has a LAUNDRY ROOM. I did 4 loads of laundry in two days. Basically every time we went to the beach I did a load of laundry. It reduced the sand and grossness of the beach aspect by 1 trillion points. Also, kids, they seriously make a lot of laundry! This made returning home a few days later a breeze because laundry was already done. boom. 

3. Take basic groceries and a million billion snacks along.  Taking groceries, even going to a legit grocery store ( not just a corner store where the cost of milk is the cost of a small midsize sedan) while on vacation can really cut costs. And my kids are just always better behaved when they have eaten their weight in Pirates Booty. ( Do you not know about Pirates Booty?!? Its basically the #1 mom approved junk food of toddlers everywhere, go buy yourself a bag as big as your body at costco and thank me later). 

4. Don't forget the pack n' play. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, but this happened and we had to drive 30 minutes to the nearest Wal-Mart to buy a new one. Oooops. But at least it was much more fun going to Wal-Mart on vacation then on just a normal day, right?!?! ( I also bought donuts and muffins and Tabitha complimented me on my shopping skills, she's clearly been judging my bad grocery shopping silently from the cart for 3 years, apparently I've been "over buying" when it comes to all those fruits and veggies and good proteins I've been insisting on purchasing all these years. ha!) 



5. Get a house that has a giant TV so that your kids will wake up extra early because they are SO EXCITED about watching cartoons on the giant TV. Sigh. 



6. Thanks to having a beach house 2 minutes from the beach we would put swim suits on the kids before we left the house and just pack a pair of underwear for the end of the day, we'd then just pull off swimsuits next to the van ( discretely hiding under towels etc) and they'd ride home in undies to take a serious shower. Yup. Our kids stripped down in our van and rode around in their undies. We are AWESOME. 

7. Get a fully detailed car clean when you get home. Seriously, it will be needed, even though we did the whole "ride home in your undies" thing there was still plenty of sand and crushed gold fish in our van....also, I hear that salt water is bad for your car?!?! So drop a chunk o' change and get that sweet ride detailed. But also, it took 2 and a half hours!!!! WHAAAAAT!?!?!? Clearly they had never seen a car so dirty....



So there you go!! Hopefully you gleaned a few little life lesson nuggets from this post- or at the very least got a laugh or two at our expense. If you enjoyed this, feel free to send me a check for a million dollars. Kidding, kidding....but really. For the first time EVER I'm considering selling my soul to the Mommy Blogger wagon....  But don't worry, I will resist and you'll continue to read my blog for unsolicited and unsponsored opinions because that's just the kind of lazy/nice I am. 


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