I haven’t updated in a couple of weeks, but there hasn’t been much to write about. In fact, last week we didn’t even leave the hotel for four days!

But it’s been good. We needed to catch up on lots of school work and have a little bit of normalcy in our days. The kids are doing a great job with their homeschooling and I’m proud of them. Samuel and Sarah both work independently in the open atrium of the lobby. The staff love seeing them hard at work and comment to me frequently how focused they are.

But we have had a few exciting events occur. So, here’s a quick rundown.

Last Friday, Mark and Jennifer (www.markallenwhite.com) drove to New Jersey for the first time in 8 years to visit us and see our future home. They used to live in New Brunswick, which is the next town over and haven’t been back since they left. We hung out at the pool, ordered hotel food, ran around Basking Ridge and took pictures of a 600 year old tree, visited two libraries and one bank, met the staff of our awesome hotel, had pizza delivered, and strolled through the atrium as if we were on Downton Abbey. It was a really fun day.

On Saturday we drove into New York City, which is only 45 minutes away and PARKED ON THE STREET BY CENTRAL PARK FOR FREE!!! Yes. Free. Quite possibly the highlight of our year. We visited the Guggenheim (www.guggenheim.org)  which was amazing and FREE thanks to a wonderful museum pass sharing program offered at our library. We walked through Central Park and spent some time at the Manhattan Children’s Museum (www.cmom.org), which was also FREE thanks to our library.

Easter Sunday we had planned to go to church at a local Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Warren, NJ. Gary looked up the times at www.stonecreekchurch.org and determined that we could attend the 12:00 service. When we arrived we noticed that the parking lot was packed, but that it seemed that church was ending instead of beginning. That’s when we figured out that he had looked up Stone Creek Church in Georgia instead of Stone Crest Church in New Jersey www.stonecrestchurch.com. Only slightly embarrassing 😦

Since church was a no-go, we ended up watching a podcast online www.northpoint.org and eating at Applebee’s. Not quite the storybook Easter, but oh well…

On Tuesday Samuel and Sarah were doing their daily walk around the hotel and an unruly guest asked them for some “tree”, which we googled and learned that they weren’t actually looking for an oak or maple, but “weed”. We reported it and they were evicted from the hotel and escorted off the property by five Piscataway police officers.

Yesterday, Eli got into the hot tub and handed Gary his blackberry. It hasn’t been the same since and is being replaced, thank goodness.

And the best moment of the week was last night. A couple of days ago Eli’s milk spilled in my purse. I didn’t discover it until it starting smelling bad. I washed the purse in the sink and put it through a cycle in the washing machine. It still reeked. So last night, Gary had the GREAT idea to hang the purse outside on his side view mirrors of his junky car to air out the smell. About 10 pm the front desk clerk, Matt, called to ask me if we were parked around the side of the hotel. After confirming it was our car, he asked me if we had hung a bag on the side. I started laughing so hard just picturing how redneck we must seem to him when he informs me that someone had called 911 because they were concerned that there was an unattended bag on someone’s junk car and they were suspicious. The police were in the lobby to investigate. OMG! Does it ever end?? I assured the police officer that we were innocent and after a really big laugh they left.

Today was spent at the Honda car lot having the van worked on . I cried with a little old man in the lobby whose wife had just died of pancreatic cancer. He was so pitiful and I just couldn’t help but feel so sorry for him. They had been married for 54 years!

Tonight we have packed up our room and are moving out for a week. We’re off to the mountains of North Carolina for a week without television or internet. I can’t wait to slow down and smell some mountain air.

And being below the Mason-Dixon Line will be great, too.

http://www.vrbo.com/232877ha (My last shameless plug…) RENT FROM US!!

Our house for the week.

Yesterday we said good bye to the Embassy Suites in Piscataway and headed over to our new home for this week in Asbury Park, NJ.

Asbury Park is a quaint shore town just south of New York City.  In it’s heyday it was a popular destination for Manhattanites on weekends and summer’s at the shore.  Today much of it is falling down and there are many bare spots on the beach where majestic hotels used to stand.

Perhaps Asbury Park is most famous for “The Stone Pony”.  It is one of the world’s best known music venues. It is known as a starting point for many musicians, including New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen, Patti Scialfa, Jon Bon Jovi, and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes.  It is considered one of the greatest rock clubs of all kinds.

We rented a home about four blocks from the shore from a website called VRBO. Our home this week is a two story four bedroom 1 1/2 bath.  The owner is an accomplished and very well known interior designer and architect in NYC.  He has completely gutted this house and turned it into an eclectic charming home.  When we walked in it was like walking into a home from HGTV. 

There is also a Steinway grand piano with lots of classical music laid out to play. For the cook lover’s dream all of the appliances are Jen-Aire and the cooking ware is All Clad. We discovered that the music is piped through the house, so cooking to jazz last night was awesome.  This place is perfect! 

I feel like I’m in a tv show living here.  It’s that pretty.

The street we are living on is a suburban street with street parking and an alley in the back.  Everybody has big front porches and I can imagine it is quite the social scene in the summer.  We can walk to the NJ Transit or walk to the local 7-Eleven.  A quick 15 minute walk takes us to the boardwalk.

So this week we are experiencing a different style of living.  A bustling suburban shore town in a home that I would never think to live in full time.

We love it.