on "vacation"

When Ben and I were still working at the University there was a give-away for employees. One of the trustees had offered their time-share in Lincoln City, Oregon. At an employee social they did a drawing and Ben won! We were super excited and had even planned for Ben to take his second week of paternity leave during that week (this week) since the dates were non-negotiable.

Even though Ben was laid off, he still got to keep the time-share. We were very excited about a relaxing vacation and our first trip as a family of three. Lincoln City is on the Oregon Coast and has great beaches and an outlet mall. We didn't know much about the place and had assumed it was a beach house. We looked it up online and found out it's an older condo and the reviews weren't great. We were still optimistic as we figured a trustee wouldn't donate their time-share if it was going to be an awful experience!

We arrived on Friday and the outside was VERY sketchy. While Ben went to get the keys I waited in the car with Malakai and hoped that the inside was going to be much better! When I walked in, the first thing I saw was the fireplace and I breathed a sigh of relief...a bit too soon.

While the condo was actually bigger than our home, and there is a great jacuzzi tub in the master bedroom the place was very unfinished. The framing on the sliding glass door was missing and when Ben opened the door a board fell on him from somewhere. The furniture was old and I was constantly worried about the cleanliness of things. I wouldn't set Malakai on any of the surfaces.

My family (parents and siblings) joined us on Saturday afternoon to stay the night in the extra rooms and hang out on the beach. My brother (16) was obsessed with the tub and went in it 3 or 4 times in two days. My parents watched Malakai for us so we could go out to the beach. The beach access was a very steep set of 100 or more steps. I haven't had any exercise since giving birth to Malakai two weeks ago, so while the trek down wasn't so bad trying to make it back up after walking around in the sand was a struggle. My lungs hurt and my calves were sore the next day.

Last night Ben noticed that in the main bathroom there was water pooling around the toilet. He put a towel there and decided to let management know the next day. When he checked this morning the water had soaked the carpet in the hallway and noticed it was actually coming from the wall next to the toilet. When maintenance checked it out they discovered that the upstairs neighbors were actually the problem and that they were going to have to tear into the wall to fix it up. They offered to move us to a 4 bedroom house on the nearby lake for the rest of our stay (til Friday). We followed the manager to the house and there were tons of people outside...the previous people staying in the house had not finished packing and the cleaning crew still needed to come through. We decided to run errands to stay out of the way. AWKWARD.

We finally checked in just after 1pm. This house has close by wifi access so I'm finally able to get online (although it was nice to have a break from our internet addiction for a few days). However, the furniture is just as outdated and dingy as the previous place and we just discovered that the forced air doesn't actually work. It says it's set to 65 but that it's 80 in here. I'm roasting!

To top things off, we got a call from management saying that they have someone checking into this house on Thursday and that we could either check out early or move back to our previous condo that should be done by then. Holy goodness, these people are disorganized! You think they'd check that the place was available for our entire stay before moving us here! We would go home early but the heat in town is much worse than here and we are saving money (since our stay has been free) staying here instead of going home and using our water for laundry and our a/c. Plus, I never got to use the awesome jacuzzi tub in the other house and would like to at least experience it!

There are a ton more things wrong with both the condo and this house that I could list, but I'm thankful that we got to go on this trip and have some time as a family to relax (as best we can) and enjoy the beach and lake. We'll take Malakai on his first beach trip tomorrow, it's supposed to be the nicest day weather-wise tomorrow and we'll use the drive up access down the highway instead of the scary stairs. I will be sure to get a lot of pictures and post more updates.

Wish us luck!