Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us as we celebrate in our Happy, Happy, HAPPY Hotel home (perhaps you can hear the edge in my voice get grittier with each repetition of “happy”?)   🙂   Hope you had a lovely day with your special people.  And Happy Family Day to all of you Ontarians!  Honestly, never thought we would still be here to celebrate Heart’s Day 2016.  We are moving into our eighth week here with no date for moving into our rental on the horizon that we can see or predict.  “Hotels are a treat, right Mommy?” Hudson asked me on Saturday morning.  “I think this would be more fun if we stayed for maybe a week…”  We are beginning to feel a bit caged.  To be fair, we have no bones to pick with our treatment here – the staff really have been so lovely and helpful…and kind to us…but I very nearly have to scream now.  With the dog here now our day’s are a bit more complicated, with limited space for her to do her doggie things, and paranoia that we get her out enough so that she does not do her doggies things in the room!   We’re ready to make a grilled cheese with tomato soup for dinner, or some other super simple fare that doesn’t upset our tummies so much.    However, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day we are aiming to have some perspective – this could be a whole lot worse – again, the staff are lovely and full of spirit – they have successfully made each holiday very festive and beautiful.   Almost at the finish line and have to keep our eye on the prize and try to enjoy the (hopefully) last few days/weeks/months (?) that we have left to live here in the hotel.   We are growing quite a story! (apparently, we are learning, this is a long stay even by seasoned expat standards!)

Upon our return from running errands for the week yesterday, we were greeted at the door by the concierge who offered us a chocolate and a glass of bubbly!   Lovely red chocolates with a mult-faceted surface that really looked like jewels!   Smooth, white fondant style snow-puffs of chocolate filled with gooey ganache; the perfect apres shop snack, of course!  Glass vases of pink and red roses adorned most surfaces in the lobby.  Was very pretty!  I can honestly say I’ve never been greeted coming home in this way!  Kids said not to get used to it – the best they could probably do is coffee and a cookie! lol!  Aaron had to go back out with Hudson to try to find a recorder for music class, so there I was with the other two kids, a glass of bubbly in one hand, all the half-finished waterbottles from the car (for the kettle!) cradled precariously in the crook of my other arm, and the concierge following us up,  the baggage trolley filled with our grocery.  Never put groceries away with bubbly before!  Kind of changes the game for the better, actually 🙂  All of these firsts!!

Well, I resisted buying these adorable Star Wars inspired stuffies (was all I could do!), but couldn’t resist snapping a pic.

Christmas was a bit strange for all of us but we are very thankful for the lovely reception we received from the hotel staff.  We were still spinning upon arriving here on December 23 and were very touched to find our rooms filled with stockings, personalized with our names, even the pets!

And a very thoughtful little gift for each of the kids.  Staff had decorated the room with seasonal streamers and snowman cut outs.  Because we had to keep our gift giving small enough to fit in suitcases, we decided to give each other ornaments to hang on our little four foot tree for our room that we sent with Aaron on one of his prior-to-Christmas visits.  He stored it at a co-workers who lives up the street from us right now, so on December 24 he collected our tree and the next morning when we opened our ornaments we were able to decorate it.  Was fun!

Oh! and they even put a dog bed, a cat bed and the cutest little cat and dog dishes for food and water, and litter pan for Butterscotch!  Just SO thoughtful!  The hotel lobby tree was absolutely STUNNING.  It went up early December and stayed up until January 6 (after Epiphany).  Was beautiful to see everyday.

Hotel Home Holidays have not been like we’re used to, but as we’re trying to impress with the kids, different doesn’t necessarily mean “bad”.  There is NO way I could ever have a tree as gorgeous as the hotel lobby one at “home”.  We honestly believe that this was the best place to begin our transition to Mexico City.  With all of our needs met we haven’t had to think about some of the logisitics of every day life (ie: cooking, laundry, bills, etc.) and have been able to use our brain and body power to figure out how to get to and from school and work, develop a homework/evening routine, recover from illness, learn to drive here (!), begin to build connections.  One of the staff was driving us in the shuttle to pick up Mansell from swim practice and asked me if we had moved to Mexico City (yes) and for how long (about 5 years) and would we be living in the Hilton for that whole time… (!?!)  Everyone is wondering if we’re ever going to leave! 🙂

Here’s hoping we can be celebrating St. Paddy’s Day and Easter in our new place!  And Birthday Season is coming up…!!!