Life in a Hotel

Like most of the DC area, last Friday's storm left us without power...and we have the added bonus in Great Falls of getting our water from a well run by an electric pump!  Dealing with no AC in the 100 degree heat wave would have been bad enough, but with 3 babies it is nearly impossible to go any length of time without water!  We slept at home Friday night and the inside of the house got unbearably hot pretty quickly, especially upstairs where it's always a few degrees warmer.  Saturday, Oliver spiked a temperature of just under 104 degrees.  The pediatricians office didn't have phone lines working, so I called 911 and we were able to get it down with Tylenol and a cold compress...but he was dangerously close to having to be taken in to the ER if it had not come down as quickly as it did.  We're still not sure if it was completely heat related - possibly an infection brought on by the heat, but at any rate being stuck in the sauna our house had become wasn't making things better.  So off to a hotel for 3 nights!!

The crazy timing of all this happened to be the last day we had family visiting from Texas, and lucky for them that they were already planning to head home Saturday morning!  But we were all together for the loud and scary storm Friday, huddling under the main support beam of the house in the family room because the fast winds were making a lot of the huge trees make cracking noises outside and we were afraid one might break and fall through the roof upstairs.  We found out the next day that this actually did happen to the house two doors down!  We were fortunate to get a reservation Saturday morning at the same hotel Grandbobby, Rob and Joan had stayed at during the week, as Ryan took Reed, Brandi, and the girls here to meet up with them on Saturday.

Here are some pictures from the hotel stay!  The boys loved jumping and running around on top of the big bed.  During the course of 3 days, Oliver fell off once by accident, but has since quickly learned how to properly dismount a tall bed and couch.  The big boys slept great in their Pea Pod tents, for both naps and overnight!!  At first it was a little tricky to get them to fall asleep right away because we basically had to put them inside and quickly zip the door shut so they couldn't get out.  They were a bit confused because they haven't slept in the tents since they were little babies, but caught on quickly and were pro tent nappers in no time at all!  The last couple pictures are of Oliver after just waking up from a nap.  They always had a "where am I? / What's going on?" expression after emerging from the tents...but soon found their way over to the favorite toy in the room - the thermostat control panel, located just the perfect height for a toddler to constantly push the buttons and turn the air on and off.  Apparently they didn't understand that the main reason we were there was to keep the room at a nice, cold 65 degrees!